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Epochs of Ancient History 

EDITED BY 

REV. G. W. COX, M.A. and C. SANKEY, M.A. 


THE 

ROMAN EMPIRE of the SECOND CENTURY 


W. W. CAPES, M.A. 








EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 


THE ROMAN EMPIRE 

OF THE 


SECOND CENTURY 


THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES, 


■ ll '" 3 |f e 

WJ W? CAPES, M.A. 


BY 


LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF QUEEN’S COLLEGE, AND 
READER IN ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 


WITH TWO MAPS. 


NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. 

1884. 



2/^276 

■C 23 

/ g 82 


GRANT & FAIRES, 
Printers and Electrotypers, 

420 LIBRARY ST., PHILA. 


486666 
N. 4, ‘36 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. 

NERVA.—A. D. 96—98. 

page 

Nerva raised to the throne by the murderers of Domitian . 1 

Treats the agents of past tyranny with forbearance, though 

Pliny and others cried for vengeance .... 3 

Nerva’s measures for the poorer citizens .... 5 

The mutiny on the Danube appeased by Dion Chrysostom 6 
The violence of the praetorians caused the Emperor to choose 
Trajan as his colleague and successor, A.D. 97 6 

Death of Nerva, A.D. 98. . 


CHAPTER II. 

TRAJAN.—A. D. 97-II7. 

Trajan avenges the outrage done to Nerva .... 7 

After a year’s delay enters Rome without parade . . 9 

The simple bearing of his wife Plotina.9 

His respect for constitutional forms.lo 

His frank courtesy and fearless confidence . . . .12 

His thrift and moderation excite the surprise of Pliny . . 12 

His economy could save little except in personal expenditure 14 
Large outlay on roads, bridges, ports and aqueducts, baths 

and theatres.15 

The charitable endowments for poor children . . .19 

Which lead others to act in a like spirit . . . . 21 

Trajan’s policy with regard to the corn trade . . . .22 




vi 


Contents. 


PAGE 

His treatment of provincial interests as shown in the corre¬ 
spondence with Pliny, A.D, m-113 .... 

He would not meddle needlessly or centralize too fast . 

His war policy. 

On the side of Germany he had strengthened the frontier with 

defensive works. 

The rise of the Dacian kingdom and threats of Decebalus . 

Trajan declared war and set out, A.D. xoi .... 

The course of the campaign. 

The battle of Tapae, advance into Transylvania, and Roman 
victories bring the first war to a close. A.D. 102 

Peace did not last long. 

Trajan's preparations and bridge of stone across the Danube . 

The legions converged on Dacia and crushed the enemy, 

A.D. I06 ... ....... 

The country was colonized and garrisoned .... 

The survival of Rome’s influence in the Roumanian language 
Trajan’s forum and triumphal column .... 

The conquest of Arabia .. 

War declared against Parthia, A.D. 113 
Trajan arrives at Antioch, and marches through Armenia, 

Parthamasiris deposed and slain. 

Submission of the neighbouring princes .... 

The great earthquake at Antioch, A.D. 115 . 

Trajan crossed the Tigris and carried all before him as far as 
the Persian Gulf 

*••••• 

But the lately conquered countries rose in his rear, and he was 
forced to retire 

His death at Selinus, and character 
Taken as a type of heathen justice in legend and art 


23 

25 

26 

27 
29 
29 

31 

32 
34 

34 

35 

36 

37 

38 
40 

42 

43 
45 

45 

46 

47 


48 

49 
5i 


CHAPTER III. 


HADRIAN.—A.D. II7-138. 

The earlier life of Hadrian . 

__. * * • • • 
His sudden elevation to the throne caused ugly rumours 

His policy of peace accompanied by personal hardihood and 

regard for discipline . 

4 ••••». 


53 



Contents. 


Vll 


PAGE 

He travelled constantly through the provinces . . .55 

We hear of him in Britain, Africa, Asia Minor, and in Athens 


above all ..57 

And in Egypt.59 

The death and apotheosis of Antinous .... 60 

Hadrian’s interests cosmopolitan more than Roman . . 61 

The levelling influence of the “ Perpetual Edict,” A.D. 132 . 62 

Hadrian’s frugality and good finance.63 

The dark moods and caprices attributed to him ... 64 

His suspicious temper, system of espionage, and jealousy of 

brilliant powers.65 

His fickleness, superstition, and variety of temper . . .67 

Reasons for mistrusting these accounts of ancient authors . 68 

His villa at Tivoli.69 

Struck by disease, he chose Verus as successor, A.D. 135, who 

died soon after.71 

Antoninus was adopted in his place.72 

Hadrian’s dying agony, and fitful moods of cruelty . . 72 

His death and canonization.73 

The mausoleum of Hadrian.74 


The outbreak in Palestine was at last terribly stamped out . 75 


CHAPTER IV. 

ANTONINUS PIUS. — A.D. 138 - 161 . 

The reign of Antoninus was uneventful .... 77 

Why called Pius.77 

His good-nature was free from weakness .... 78 

He did not travel abroad, but was careful of provincial inte¬ 
rests ...•••••••• 79 

Wars were needful with Moors, Dacians, and Brigantes, yet 

he gained more by diplomacy. 80 

His homely life at Lorium ....... 81 

His easy and forgiving temper. 81 

Tender care of his adopted son, to whom he left the Empire 
at his death . . • ..^3 





Contents. 


vm 


CHAPTER V. 

MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS.—A.D. 147-180. 

PAGE 

The early life of M. Aurelius.84 

His correspondence with Fronto, his old tutor . . *85 

His conversion from rhetoric to philosophy ... 86 

The jealousy of Fronto.86 

Offices of state and popular favour did not turn the head of 

the young prince.88 

He looked to the Stoic creed for guidance, but without loss of 

tenderness.89 

Fronto, like Faustina, had little love for philosophers . . 90 

On the death of Antoninus M. Aurelius shared his power with 

L. Verus, A.D. 161.91 

Ominous prospects, floods, dangers on the Euphrates . 91 

Verus starts for the East, where the soldiers were demoralized 93 
The Parthians were humbled, and Verus claimed the merit of 
his general’s successes, A.D. 166 ...... 95 

Fronto’s courtly panegyric.95 

M. Aurelius meantime endows charities for foundlings, appoints 
juridici , and guardians for orphans, and work unremittingly 96 
But he is called away to the scene of war . . . .98 

The fortune of the Roman arms in Britain .... 99 

Both Emperors started for the Danube, where the border 

races sued for peace.101 

The ravages of the plague, A.D. 167-8.101 

The war begins again, but is checked by the spread of the 

plague.102 

Verus dies, and M. Aurelius rules henceforth alone, A.D. 169 103 
The long and arduous struggle on the Northern frontier . 104 

The Marcomannic war followed by the campaign against the 
Quadi, in which we read of the marvel of the “ Thundering 


Legion ”.106 

The revolt of Avidius Cassius, A.D. 175 .... 108 

Contempt expressed by him for the Emperor as a ruler . .110 

The speedy failure of the insurrection. hi 

The Emperor showed no vindictive feeling .... 112 





Contents. 


IX 


PAGE 

He went to restore order in the East, and Faustina died on 

the way. **3 

His short rest at Rome, and endowments in memory of his 

wife. . 

Recalled to the war in the North, he died at Vienna or Sir- 

mium, A.D. 180. JI 5 

Grief of his subjects, and monuments in his honour . . 115 

His “ Meditations ” reflect his habits of self-inquiry and grati¬ 
tude .. II 7 

There is no trace in them of morbid vanity or self-contempt 121 
He tried to be patient and cheerful in the hard work of life . 122 

Nor was he too ambitious or too sanguine in his aims . 124 

His anticipations of Christian feeling.125 

The thought of a Ruling Providence stirred his heart with 

tenderness and love.. 

His delicate sympathy with Nature , . . . .129 

His melancholy and sense of isolation .... 131 

The austere Stoic creed could not content him . . *131 

The contrast of the contemporary Christians . . . 131 

M. Aurelius was unfortunate in his son Commodus . . 132 

Was he also in his wife Faustina ? Reasons for doubting the 
truth of the common story.133 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE ATTITUDE OF THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 
TOWARDS THE CHRISTIANS. 

The Christians at first regarded as a Jewish sect, and not dis¬ 
turbed .135 

In the time of Nero we trace dislike to the Christians as such 137 
They were regarded as unsocial and morose fanatics, accused 

of impiety and of foul excesses.138 

Christianity was not made illegal till the time of Trajan, whose 

answer to Pliny determined the law.141 

The reasons why the government might distrust the Christian 

Church.143 

Succeeding Emperors inclined to mercy, but the popular dis¬ 
like grew more intense.145 







X 


Contents. 


PAGE 

The rescripts of Hadrian and Antoninus very questionable 146 

The martyrdom of Polycarp.147 

The persecution at Vienna and Lugdunum .... 148 

Lucian's account of Peregrinus Proteus reflects some noble 
features of the early Church, A.D. 165 . . . . 151 

The attack of Celsus, A.D. 150, was answered in later days . 152 

The line of argument taken by the Apologists of the age . 154 

The life of Justin Martyr.155 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STATE RELIGION, AND 
OF THE RITES IMPORTED FROM THE EAST. 

The Emperors respected the old forms of national religion 157 

The Collegia or brotherhoods .... . 158 

The official registers of the Arval Brothers, containing a full 

description of their ritual.159 

We may note (x) their punctilious regard for ancient forms 161 

(2) The absence of moral or spiritual influence . . . 162 

(3) The loyalty to the established powers of state . . 163 

The old religion was cold and meagre, and supplemented by 

exotic creeds.164 

The civil power only feebly opposed the new rites, which were 
welcomed by devout minds like Plutarch and Maximus 

Tyrius.165 

The mystic reveries and visions of Aristides in his sickness, 

A.D. 144-161.168 

New moods of ecstatic feeling, self-denial, and excitement, 
and mystic gloom encouraged by Eastern religions . . 168 

The rite of the taurobolium .170 

The new comers lived in peace in the imperial Pantheon . 171 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LITERARY CURRENTS OF THE AGE. 

The enthusiasm for learning, but want of creative power . 172 

The culture of the age was mainly Greek and professorial . 173 

The various classes of Sophists.175 

1. Moralists and Philosophers.176 




Contents. 


xi 


Epictetus, fl. under Trajan 
Dion Chrysostom “ 

Plutarch il “ 

2. Literary artists and rhetoricians 
Fronto, A.D. 90-168 
Polemon, fl. under Hadrian . 
Favorinus “ “ 

Herodes Atticus, A.D. 101-177 
Apuleius, fl. under M. Aurelius . 
Lucian “ “ 


PAGE 
178 
. 182 

185 

. 189 

190 
. 192 

193 

• 193 

197 

199 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE ADMINISTRATIVE FORMS OF THE IMPERIAL 
GOVERNMENT. 


The Emperor was an absolute sovereign, and his ministers 
were at first his domestics, afterwards knights 
The most important officers were, (1) a rationibus (treasurer) 

2. Ab epistulis (secretary). 

3. A libellis (clerk of petitions). 

4. A cubiculo (chamberlain). 

The Privy Council. 

The Praefect of the city .. 

The Praefect of the Praetorian Guard. 

The provincial governors and their suite .... 

Local magistrates and local freedom ..... 

Few guarantees of permanence ...... 

The municipalities courted interference .... 

The governors began to meddle more .... 

The Caesar was more appealed to . 

The actual evils of a later age. 

1. The pressure of taxation, moderate at first, became 

more and more intense. 

2. The increase of bureaucracy was followed by oppressive 

restrictions on the Civil Service . 

3. The municipal honours became onerous charges 

4. Trades and industries became hereditary burdens . 

INDEX. 


203 

204 

205 

205 

206 

206 

207 

207 

208 

209 
211 

211 

212 

212 

213 

213 

216 

217 
219 
223 



ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES 


Scrip tores Histories Augustes. 

Dion Cassius, Hist. Rom. Xiphilini Epit. 

Pliny, Letters. 

Fronto, Letters. 

Marcus Antoninus, quoted commonly in the transla¬ 
tion of G. Long. 

Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 

PHILOSOSTRATUS, Vitee Sophistarum. 

Epictetus, Manual and Dissert. 

PLUTARCH, Moral Treatises. 

Lucian, Works. 

Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. 



LIST OF MAPS. 



I. Map to illustrate the Dacian War. To face page 31 
II. Map to illustrate the Parthian War. “ 43 



ROMAN HISTORY. 


THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES. 


CHAPTER I. 

NERVA. A. D. 96-98. 

Before the murderers of Domitian raised their hands 
to strike the fatal blow, they looked around, 
we read, to find a successor to replace him. raise( j to t h e 
Others whom they sounded on the subject [he°murder- 
shrunk away in fear or in suspicion, till they ersof Do- 

, , . , mitian, 

thought of M. Cocceius Nerva, who was 
likely to fill worthily the office that would soon be va¬ 
cant. 

Little is known of his career for more than sixty years, 
till after he had twice been consul, and when his work 
seemed almost done, he rose for a little while to take the 
highest place on earth. The tyrant on the throne had 
eyed him darkly, had banished him because he heard 
that the stars pointed in his case to the signs of sove¬ 
reign power, and indeed only spared his life because 
other dabblers in the mystic lore said that he was fated 
soon to die. The sense of his danger, heightened by 
his knowledge of the plot, made Nerva bold when others 




2 


The Age of the A?ito?iines. 


A.D. 


flinched; so he lent the conspirators his name, and rose 
by their help to the imperial seat. He had dallied with 
the Muses, and courted poetry in earlier years ; but he 
showed no creative aims as ruler, and no genius for heroic 
measures. The fancy or the sanguine confidence of 
youth was chequered perhaps by waning strength and 
feeble health, or more probably a natural kindliness of 
temper made him more careful of his people’s wants. 
After the long nightmare of oppression caused by the 
caprices of a moody despot, Rome woke again to find 
herself at rest under a sovereign who indulged no wan¬ 
ton fancies, but was gentle and calm and unassuming, 
homely in his personal bearing, and thrifty 
gentle mode- with the coffers of the state. He had few 
ration, expensive tastes, it seemed, and little love 

for grand parade, refusing commonly the proffered sta¬ 
tues and gaudy trappings of official rank. As an old 
senator, he felt a pride in the dignity of the august as¬ 
sembly, consulted it in all concerns of moment, and 
pledged himself to look upon its members’ lives as sa¬ 
cred. A short while since and they were cowering before 
Domitian’s sullen frown, or shut up in the senate house 
by men-at-arms while the noblest of their number were 
dragged out before their eyes to death. But now they 
had an Emperor who treated them as his peers, who lis¬ 
tened patiently to their debates, and met them on an 
easy footing in the courtesies of social life. 
He rose above the petty jealousy which 
looks askant at brilliant powers or great his¬ 
toric names, and chose even as his col¬ 
league in the consulship the old Verginius Rufus, in 
whose hands once lay the imperial power had he only 
cared to grasp it. Nor was he haunted by suspicious 
fears, such as sometimes give the timid a fierce appetite 


treating 
the senate 
with re¬ 
spect. 


96-98. 


Nerva. 


3 


for blood. For when he learnt that a noble of old fami¬ 
ly had formed a plot against his life, he took no steps to 
punish him, but kept him close beside him in his train, 
talked to him at the theatre with calm composure, and 
even handed him a sword to try its edge and temper, as 
if intent to prove that he had no mistrustful or revenge¬ 
ful thought. 

There were many indeed to whom he seemed too 
easy-going, too careless of the memories of wrong-doing, 
to satisfy their passionate zeal for justice. There were 
those who had seen their friends or kinsmen hunted to 
death by false accusers, who thought that surely now at 
length they might wreak their vengeance on the tyrant’s 
bloodhounds. The early days of Nerva’s , , 

1 . and l ^ e 

rule seemed to natter all their hopes, for the agents of 

prison doors were opened to let the innocent ranny Y with 
go forth, while their place was taken by forbearance, 
spies and perjurers and all the harpies who had preyed 
on noble victims. For a while it seemed as if the days 
of retribution were at hand, but the Emperor’s gentle 
temper, or the advice of wary counsellors, prevailed; 
Nerva soon stayed his hand, and would not have the 
first pages of his annals scored in characters of blood. 
To many, such clemency seemed idle weakness; Pliny, 
humane and tender-hearted as he was, reflects in his 
familiar letters the indignation of his class, 
and sorely frets to think of the great crimi¬ 
nals who flaunted in the eves of men the 
pride of their ill gotten wealth. He tells 
with a malicious glee the story of a supper- 
party in the palace, where the name of a notorious in¬ 
former happened to come up, and first one and then 
another of the guests told tale after tale of his misdeeds, 
till the Emperor asked at last what could be done with 


though 
Pliny and 
others cried 
for ven- 

f eance. (PI. 
Ip. iv. 22.) 


4 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


him if he were living still. Whereupon one bolder than 
the rest replied, “ he would be asked to supper with us 
here to-night; ” and indeed close beside Nerva there was 
lolling on the couch an infamous professor of the same 
black art. We may read, too, in a letter written long 
afterwards to a young friend, how Pliny came forward 
in the senate to laud the memory of the great Helvidius, 
and brand with infamy the wretch who caused his death. 

At first he found scant sympathy from those 
E p . ix. 1 3 . w h 0 heard him. Some troubled with a 
guilty conscience tried to drown his voice in clamour, on 
the plea that no notice had been given of his motion ; 
some begged him not to raise the ghosts of worn-out 
feuds, but to let them rest in peace awhile after the long 
reign of terror. Wary friends, too, warned him to be 
cautious, lest he should make himself a mark for the 
jealousy of future rulers. But Pliny was resolute and 
persevered. The consul, who acted as Speaker in the 
senate, silenced him indeed at first, but let him rise at 
length in his own turn, and, leaving the subject then be¬ 
fore the house, speak for the memory of his injured 
friend, till the full stream of his indignant eloquence 
carried the listening senators along, and swept away the 
timid protests raised for the accused. The Emperor step¬ 
ped in, and stayed proceedings in the senate ; but the ora¬ 
tor recalled with pride in later years the enthusiasm 
which his vehemence had stirred, and felt no throb of 
pity in his kindly heart when he was told that the wretched 
man whom he accused was haunted soon after in his dying 
moments by his own stern look and passionate words* 
But Nerva was determined to let the veil fall on the 
past. He raised no question about the favours and the 
boons of earlier rulers, but respected the immunities and 
dispensations however carelessly bestowed. 


Nerva. 


96-98. 


5 


There were still three powers that must be reckoned 
with before any government could feel se- 

iN erva s 

cure—the populace of Rome, the frontier measures 
legions, and the praetorian guards. The poorer citi- 
first looked to be courted and caressed as 
usual; but the treasury was empty, and Nerva was too 
thrifty to spend lavishly on the circus or the theatres or 
the processions which helped to make a Roman holiday. 
Still he was careful of the real interests of the poor; he 
gave large sums for land to be granted freely to the col¬ 
onists who would exchange the lounging indolence of 
Rome for honest industry in country work. Where 
funds were wanting for this purpose, he stripped the pal¬ 
ace of its costly wares, sold even the heirlooms of his 
family, and gave up houses and broad lands to carry 
out his plans for the well-being of his subjects. To show 
that such self-sacrifice was due to no caprice of passing 
fancy, he had the new name of “The Palace of the Peo¬ 
ple” set up in characters which all might read upon 
the mansion of the Caesars, while the coins that were 
struck in his imperial mint bore the old 
name of Liberty upon their face. For he Agnc. 3. 
tried, says Tacitus, to reconcile the claims of monarchy 
and freedom—the two things found incompatible be¬ 
fore. 

The distant legions had suffered little from Domitian’s 
misrule. His father and brother had been generals of 
mark, and the thought of his own inglorious campaigns 
soon faded from their memory; they knew him chiefly 
as a liberal paymaster and indulgent chief, and they 
heard with discontent that the Flavian dynasty had fall¬ 
en, and that Rome had chosen a new ruler. The soldiers 
on the Danube broke out into open riot when thev heard 
the news, and talked of marching to avenge their mas- 


6 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A. D. 


The mutiny 
on the Dan- 


ter. But by good hap, a certain Dion, a 
poor wandering scholar, was at hand. Driv. 
by C Dion lbcd en hy the fallen tyrant into exile as a phi- 
chrysostom. losopher of note, he had lived a vagrant life 
upon the frontier, working for a paltry pittance as a gar¬ 
dener’s daily drudge, and carrying in his little bundle, 
for the solace of his leisure, only the Phaedon of Plato 
and a single oration of Demosthenes. Roused now to 
sudden action by the mutiny among the legions, he flung 
aside, like the hero of the Odyssey, the rags that had 
disguised him, and gathering a crowd together he held 
the rude soldiers spellbound by the charms of an elo¬ 
quence which had won for him the name of Chrysostom 
or Golden-mouthed, while he called up before their fancy 
the outrages that had wearied a long-suffering world, 
and armed against the despot the foes of his own house¬ 
hold. So Dion’s well-turned phrases, on which his bi¬ 
ographer dwells with admiring pride, soothed the exci¬ 
ted mutineers, and caused the bonds of discipline to re¬ 
gain their hold. 

But the praetorians were dangerously near to Rome, 
and had already learnt their power to set up or to de¬ 
throne their rulers. Their generals-in-chief had taken 
part in the murder of Domitian, and had influence 
enough at first to keep their troops in hand, and make 
them swear fealty to another Emperor. But 

JofenceTthe discontent soon spread among them; the 
praetorians crea tures of Domitian plied them with in¬ 
trigues, and found mouths ready to complain of scanty 
largess and of slow promotion under the influence of 
the new regime. The smouldering fire soon burst into a 
flame. The guards marched in open riot to the palace 
with ominous cries, and clamoured for the murderers’ 
heads. It was in vain that Nerva tried to soothe their 


96-98. 


Nerva. 


7 


caused the 
Emperor to 
choose Tra¬ 
jan as col¬ 
league and 
successor. 
a. d. 97. 


fury; in vain he bared his neck and bade them strike; 
the ringleaders would have their will, and dragged their 
victims off to death before the feeble Em¬ 
peror’s eyes. Such a confession of his 
weakness was fatal, as he felt, to his useful¬ 
ness as a ruler. He knew that stronger 
hands than his were needed to steer the 
state through the troubled waters, and he resolved to 
choose at once a worthy colleague and successor. 

He chose with a rare unselfishness no kinsman or in¬ 
timate of his own, not even a noble of old Roman line¬ 
age, but a soldier of undoubted merit, who was then in 
high command among the legions on the German fron¬ 
tier. A few days afterwards the Emperor made his way 
in state to the temple on the Capitol, to offer thanks for 
the news of victory just brought from Pannonia to Rome, 
and there, in the hearing of the crowd, he adopted Tra¬ 
jan as his son, with an earnest prayer that the choice 
might prove a blessing to the state. Then in the senate 
house he had the name of Caesar given to his partner in 
the cares of office, and that done, soon passed away 
from life, after sixteen months of rule, which served only 
as a fitting prelude to the government of his successor. 


CHAPTER II. 

TRAJAN. A.D. 97-II7. 

Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, a native of Italica in Spain, 
had been trained from early youth in the hard discipline 
of Roman warfare, and by long service in Trajan 
the camps had earned a title to the round outrage the 
of civil honours, and to a place among the done to 

1 # Nerva 

senators of Rome. Summoned by Domitan 



8 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


from Spain at the head of a legion to the Rhine, he had 
come probably too late to help in quelling a revolt; but 
he had won by his promptitude the honour of a consul¬ 
ship, and was advanced by Nerva to the command of 
upper Germany, then the most important of provincial 
offices, in which his energy was being proved when the 
unlooked for news arrived that he was 
chosen for the imperial succession ; and the 
tidings of Nerva’s death found him still busy with his 
military duties on the Rhine. He was yet 
a.d. 98. Jan. - n v jg 0ur 0 f his manhood when the 

cares of state fell with the purple mantle on his shoul¬ 
ders ; the changing scenes of his laborious life had taught 
him experience of men and manners, and it was with no 
wavering hands that he took up the reins of office, and he 
grasped them firmly to the end. Mutiny and discontent 
seemed to have vanished already at his name ; but he 
had not forgotten the outrage done to Nerva, nor the 
parting charge in which he prayed him, 

' 42 ’ like the aged Chryses in the words of 
Homer, “ to avenge the suppliant’s unavailing tears.” 
Trajan was prompt and secret. The ringleaders of the 
riot were called away to Germany on various pleas, and 
none came back to tell how they were treated there. 

But though he could enforce discipline with needful 
rigour, he had no lack of reverence for constitutional 
. . forms. One of his earliest official acts was 

but writes 

to the a letter to the senate, full of regard for its 

respectful august traditions, in the course of which he 

terms. promised to respect the life of every man of 

worth. The credulous fancy of the age, as reported in the 
history of Dion Cassius, saw the motive for the promise 
in a dream, in which a venerable figure came before him, 
clad in a purple robe and with a garland on his head— 


97-H7- 


Trajan. 


9 


such as was the painter’s symbol for the senate—and laid 
his finger upon Trajan’s neck, leaving his signet stamp 
first on one side and then upon the other. Whatever 
we may think the cause, whether sense of justice or mys¬ 
terious warning prompted him to write that letter, he tried 
certainly to make good the promise it contained, and 
trod the dizzy heights of absolute power with the calm¬ 
ness of a serene and balanced temper. He was in no 
haste to enter Rome or receive the homage of the senate 
and the people. Perhaps he breathed more freely in 
the camp, where he lived as simply as his ancient com¬ 
rades, and mistrusted the parade and insincerity of the 
great city. Perhaps he waited till he felt his throne se¬ 
cure, and till he knew that the far-off legions had rati¬ 
fied the choice of Nerva. 

At length, after a year’s delay, he quietly set out upon 
the journey, without any stately train of followers to bur¬ 
den with exactions the towns through which 
they passed. The only trace of ostentation 
which he showed was in publishing the 
items of his travelling expenses side by side 
with the accounts of the processions of Do- 
mitian. 

At his first entry into Rome there was the same ab¬ 
sence of parade. He eschewed the white horses and 
triumphal car of the imperial pageants; no numerous 
body-guard kept the people at a distance, but as his 
manly figure moved along the streets, men saw him in¬ 
terchange a hearty greeting with the senators he met, 
and pass no old acquaintance unob¬ 
served. They marked also the same simple bearingof 6 
earnestness in the bearing of his wife Plo- 
tina, who walked calmly by his side, and 
as she passed into the palace that was now to be her 


After a 
year’s delay 
enters 

Rome with¬ 
out parade, 
A. D. 99* 


10 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


home, prayed with a quiet emphasis, in the hearing of 
the crowd, that she might leave it in the same temper 
that she entered it. 

A like unassuming spirit was shown in Trajan’s deal¬ 
ings with the senate. He called upon it to resume its 
. . work as in an age of freedom, and to ac- 

respect for knowledge the responsibilities oi power, 
the consti- C ^ He honestly respected its traditions, and 
tution, wished the government to be carried for¬ 

ward in its name. The holders of official rank were en¬ 
couraged to look upon themselves as ministers of state 
and not as servants of the Caesar; and the new generals 
of the imperial guards had their swords given them with 
the words, “ Use this in my defence while I rule justly, 
but against me if I prove to be unworthy.” For there 
was little danger now that the old constitutional forms 
should be misused. The senate was no longer an as¬ 
sembly of great nobles, proudly reliant on the traditions 
of the past, and on the energy which had laid the world 
prostrate at their feet. Many of the old families had 
passed away ; their wealth, their eminence, their histo¬ 
ric glories had made them victims to a tyrant’s jealousy 
or greed. Their places had been taken by new comers 
from the provinces or creatures of imperial favour, and a 
century had passed away since the senate of the com¬ 
monwealth had claimed or had deserved to rule. The 
,. , ancient offices, even the consulship itself, 

which, r 

venerable were little more than empty honours, and 
were^had no therefore passed rapidly from hand to hand; 
real power. and even piiny, full as he was of sentimen¬ 
tal reverence for the past, asked himself if the tribunate 
which he held awhile had indeed any meaning for his 
days, or was only a venerable sham. Hence Trajan, 
strong and self-reliant though he was, had no jealousy 


97-117* 


Trajan. 


11 


of names and titles, and cared little for the outer forms, 
so the work was done as he would have it. He had lit¬ 
tle interest in meddling with the mere machinery of gov¬ 
ernment, and though some parts were chiefly ornamen¬ 
tal, and others seemed rusty and out-worn, yet he would 
not pull the whole to pieces, for the sake of symmetry 
and finish, if there were only working wheels enough to 
bear the necessary strain. He knew that from the force 
of habit men loved the venerable forms, and that vital 
changes soon grew crusted over with the fanciful associa¬ 
tions of the past, till all seemed old while all was really 
new. So new coins came from his mints with the sym¬ 
bols of the old republic ; his courtiers were allowed to 
guard with reverent care their statues of Brutus and Cas¬ 
sius and the Catos, and the once dreaded name of lib¬ 
erty came freely to the pen of every writer of his day. 

He shrank with instinctive modesty from the naked 
assertion of his power; not like Augustus from fear or 
hypocritic craft, and therefore with the sense 
of life-long self-restraint, but with the frank- His homely 
ness of a soldier who disliked high airs and and frank 

iTT i courtesy 

stiff parade. He went about the streets al¬ 
most unguarded, allowed suitors of every class an easy 
access to his chamber, and took part with genial courte¬ 
sy in the social gatherings of Rome. 

Flattering phrases had no music for his ear, and made 
him feel none of the divinity of kingship; so he delayed 
as long as possible the customary honours , . , 
for his kinsmen, and flatly refused to pose confidence, 
himself as a deity before the time. It was 
therefore only natural for him to rebuke the officious 
zeal of the informers who reported words or acts of 
seeming disrespect, and the old laws of treason which 
had covered charges, so fatal because so ill-defined, 


12 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A D. 


dropped for a while at least into abeyance. After the 
morbid suspicions of Domitian men could hardly under¬ 
stand at first the fearless trustfulness of the present ru¬ 
ler, and still told him of their fears and whispered their 
misgivings of many a possible malcontent and traitor. 

One case of this kind may be singled out to throw 
light upon the Emperor’s temper. Licinius Sura was one 
of the wealthiest of living Romans, and a marked figure 
in the social circles in which the intimates of Trajan 
moved. He had won his sovereign’s confidence, who 
owed his throne, as it was said, to Sura’s influence when 
Nerva was looking round for a successor. Yet sinister 
rumours of disloyal plots were coupled with his name, 
and zealous friends soon brought the stories to the Em¬ 
peror’s ear, and wearied him with their repeated warn¬ 
ings. At last he started on a visit to Licinius himself, 
sent his guards home, and chatted freely with his host, 
then asked to see the servant who acted as the doctor 
of the house, and had himself dosed for some slight ail¬ 
ment. After this he begged to have his friend’s own 
barber sent to him to trim his beard as he sat talking on ; 
and that done, he stayed to dinner, took his leave, and 
went away without one word or symptom of suspicion. 
Ever afterwards he said to those who came to him with 
any ugly tale about Licinius, “Why did he spare me 
then, when he had me in his power, and his servant’s 
hand was on my throat ?” 

But probably his special merit in the eyes of all classes 
in Italy save the very poorest was his frugal thrift. Au- 
His frugal gustus had husbanded with care the re¬ 
thrift, sources of the state and restored the finan¬ 

cial credit of the empire ; but he drew large¬ 
ly from the purses of his subjects, had recourse at first 
to proscriptions and forced loans, and in spite of angry 


97-i 17. 


Trajan. 


13 


clamour had imposed succession duties which were 
odious to all the wealthy Romans. Vespasian had ruled 
with wise economy and replenished his exhausted cof¬ 
fers ; but then his name recalled the memory of a mean 
and sordid parsimony that trafficked and haggled for the 
pettiest gains. Most of the other Caesars had supplied 
their needs by rapine ; had struck down wealthy victims 
when they coveted their lands or mansions, or had let 
the informers loose upon their prey, to harry and to pro¬ 
secute, and to rake the spoils into the Em¬ 
peror’s privy purse. But Trajan checked ijght^the 0 
with a firm hand all the fiscal abuses of the burdens of 
last century that were brought before his 
eye, withdrew all bounties and encouragements from the 
informers, and had the disputed claims of his own agents 
brought before the courts of law and decided on their le¬ 
gal merits. The presents which town councils and 
other corporate bodies had offered to each sovereign at 
his accession had grown into a burdensome exaction, 
and they heard with thankfulness that Trajan would 
take nothing at their hands. 

The pressure of the succession duties too was light¬ 
ened ; near kinsmen were exempted from the charge, 
and a minimum of property was fixed below which the 
heir paid nothing. Men’s dying wishes also were re¬ 
spected. No longer were greedy hands laid on their 
property in the interests of Caesar, nor quibbling charges 
brought to quash their wills; the legacies that fell to 
Trajan were the tokens of a genuine regard, and not the 
poor shifts of a dissembling fear which sacrificed a part 
to save the rest. 

A financial policy so just and liberal was hailed on all 
sides with a hearty welcome, but shrewd heads may well 
have thought there was a danger that such self-denial 


14 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


A.D. IOO. 


might be pushed too far. The cool account- 

excite the 

surprise of ants and close-handed agents of the trea- 
Pimy. sury murmured probably that the state would 

be bankrupt if systems so lax came into vogue; and 
even Pliny in his stately panegyric, after a 
passing jest at their expense, stays the cur¬ 
rent of his unbroken praise to hint that there may pos¬ 
sibly be rocks ahead. “ When I think,” he says “ of the 
loyal offerings declined, of the imperial dues remitted by 
the treasury, of the informers thrust aside, and then again 
of the largess granted to the soldiers and the people, I 
am tempted to enquire whether you have balanced care¬ 
fully enough the ways and means of the imperial budget.’’ 
And indeed the Roman ruler’s purse was not too full, 
nor was it an easy task to meet the calls upon it. 

The charges of the civil service were a new burden of 
the empire. In the best days of the republic men served 
their country from a sense of duty or for 
could 0 save honour; in the worst age of its decline they 

,lttle received no pay directly from the state, but 

pillaged the poor provincials at their mercy. Now sala¬ 
ries were given to all the officials of the central govern¬ 
ment throughout the Roman world, save a few only in 
the capital, and the outlay on this head tended always to 
mount higher as the mechanism in each department grew 
more complex. The world had been conquered at the 
first by troops of citizens, serving only on short cam¬ 
paigns ; and in after years the needy soldiers of the later 
commonwealth were in great measure fed and pensioned 
out of the plunder of the provinces : but the standing 
armies now encamped upon the borders of the empire, 
though small if measured by the standard of our modern 
life, were large enough to make their maintenance a 
problem somewhat hard to solve. The dissolute popu- 


97-i 17 . 


Trajan. 


15 


lace of Rome, too proud to work but not to beg, looked 
to have their food and pleasures provided for them by 
the state, and were likely to rise in riotous discontent if 
their civil list were pared too close. 

Under these heads there was little saving to be made, 
and it remained only for the Emperor to stint himself. 

^ Happily he had few costly tastes, no pam- ^ ^ 

pered favourites to be endowed, no passion Emperor’s 1 
for building sumptuous palaces, no wish to expenditure 
squander the revenues of a province on a sin¬ 
gle stately pageant, to be a nine days’ wonder to the world. 

He was blessed too with a wife of rare discretion. Con¬ 
tent like the old Roman matrons to rule her house with 
singleness of heart and be the life-long partner of her 
husband’s cares, Plotina showed no restless vanity as the 
queen of changing fashions in the gay society of the 
great city, but discouraged luxury and ostentation, and 
was best pleased to figure in the coinage *)f her times as 
the familiar type of wifely fidelity and 

J ' Large outlay 

womanly decorum. Little was spent upon on public 
the imperial household, but there was large ' vorkb ’. 
outlay on great public works, planned and carried out 
with grand magnificence. Gradually by patient thrift the 
funds were gathered for such ends as trade revived, and 
credit was restored, and capital came forth once more 
from its hiding places in an epoch of mutual confidence 
and justice. As the national wealth increased under the 
influence of favouring conditions, the burdens of taxation 
pressed less heavily, while the revenues of the state grew 
larger every year. 

Safety and ease of intercourse are among the primary 
needs of civilized life, and the Romans might be proud 
of being: the great road-makers of the an- , 

0 on roads, 

cient world. But of late years, we read, the 


A.D. 


16 


The Age of the Antonines. 


needful works had been neglected, and some of the fa¬ 
mous highways of old times were fast falling into disre¬ 
pair. The Appian above all, the queen of roads as it 
had once been styled, was figured in the coins and bas- 
reliefs of Trajan’s reign as a woman leaning on a wheel, 
and imploring the Kmperor to come to her relief. Suc¬ 
cour was given with a liberal hand, and where it ran 
through the dangerous Pontine marshes, foundations of 
solid stone were raised above the surface of the boggy 
soil, bridges were built over the winding rivulets, and 
houses of refuge erected here and there along the way. 

Other parts of Italy were also the objects of like care. 
Three new roads at least connected the great towns that 
lay upon the coast, and though the fragmentary annals 
of the times make no mention of them, the milestones 
or monuments since found speak of the careful fore¬ 
thought of the ruler whose name they bore. We have 
also in like forms in other countries the same enduring 
witnesses to roads and works like the famous 
® nd bridge of Alcantara; and the cost of these 

bridges, ’ 

was sometimes met by his own privy purse, 
sometimes by the imperial treasury, or else by the cor¬ 
porate funds of neighbouring towns. 

Much was done too in the interests of trade to open 
up Italy to foreign navies. The old port of Ostia, deep¬ 
ened and improved a century before, had been nearly 
choked by sand and mud. Fresh efforts were now made 
to arrest the forces of decay, and under the 
and ports, new name of Trajan’s Port it appears upon 

the faces of the coins as a wide bay in which triremes 
could ride at anchor. But Rome seemed to need a safer 
outlet to the sea, as the old one at the Tiber’s mouth 
6 was really doomed to fail. A new port was 
107. therefore made at Centumcellae, the Civita 


97-U7- 


Trajan. 


17 


Vecchia of later days. Pliny, who went 
there on a visit when the work was going 
on, describes in lively style what was being P1,n y> VJ - 
done before his eyes, and tells of the break¬ 
water which, rising at the entrance of the harbour, looked 
almost like a natural island, though formed of rocks 
from the mainland. 

A third work of the same kind was carried forward on 
the other coast, in the harbour of Ancona; and a grand 
triumphal arch, built of enormous blocks of stone, is left 
still standing to record the senate’s grateful praises of 
the ruler who had spent so much of his own 
purse to open Italy and make the seas se- before A ' D ‘ 
cure. The Isthmus of Suez too was cared 
for in the interests of trade ; and the name of Trajan 
which it bears in Ptolemy points to the efforts of the mo¬ 
narch to carry out the needful works in connexion with 
the granite quarries of the neighbouring Claudian range, 
in which inscriptions of the period are found. Nor was 
Rome neglected while other lands were 
cared for. The great aqueducts of the ducts qUC * 
republic and the early empire were not 
now enough to content the citizens of Rome, and com¬ 
plaints were often heard that the streams of water 
brought in them from the hills far away were often tur¬ 
bid and impure, and polluted by the carelessness of 
those who used them. But now the various sources of 
supply were kept carefully distinct, a lake 
was formed in and reserved for separate 
uses; which the waters of the Anio might stand and 
clear themselves after their headlong course over the 
rough mountain ground; and besides these and the 
purer streams of the Aqua Marcia, others were provided 
by the bounty of the present ruler and specially ho- 

C 


A. D. IIO. 


i8 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


noured with his name. For nearly 300,000 Roman 
paces the various aqueducts were carried on the long 
lines of countless arches, and their vast remains still 
move the traveller’s wonder as he sees them stretch 
from the city walls far into the Campagna, or perhaps 
even more as he comes here and there upon some state¬ 
ly fragment in the lonely valleys of the Sabine hills. 

The policy of the great statesmen of the Augustan 
age, the vanity and pomp of other rulers, had filled the 
capital with great buildings destined for 

and theatres ever Y variety of use; but as if the supply 
was still too scanty, fresh baths and porti¬ 
coes and theatres were raised to speak to future ages of 
the sovereign who lived simply but built grandly. For 
his own personal comfort, it would seem, no mason toiled, 
and when the great circus was enlarged to hold some 
thousand more spectators, the Emperor’s balcony was 
swept away, and no projecting lines were left to interrupt 
the people’s view. Pliny had once said of him, in the 
formal eulogy of earlier days, that his modesty of temper 
led him to preserve the old works rather than raise new 
ones and that the streets of Rome at last had rest from 
the heavy loads of the contractor’s waggons. And this 
was true perhaps of the first years of his reign ; it may 
have held good always of the wants of himself and of 
his family; but it seems a curious contrast to the words 
in which, after seeing Trajan’s name inscribed on one 
after another of the national monuments which he had 
raised, Constantine compared it to the parasitic herb 
which grew as a thing of course on every wall. But in 
. , all this he was only following the imperial 

without fresh . J ° r 

burdens traditions, and the only trace of novelty 

of taxation. . , . , 

therein was doing so much without putting 
fresh burdens on his people. 


97-i 1 7. 


Trajan. 


19 


Another form of outlay showed a more original con¬ 
ception, and the end and means in this case were both 
new. In the middle of the eighteenth century some 
peasants near Placentia (Piacenza) turned up with the 
plough a bronze tablet, which was no less 
than ten feet broad, six feet high, and 600 Endowments 1 * 
pounds in weight. It was soon broken into ^iidren 
pieces, some of which were sold as old metal 
to be melted down for bells, but happily they caught the 
eyes of men who had scholarship enough to read the 
Latin words engraved on them. By their liberality and 
zeal the other fragments were bought up, and the whole 
when pieced together brought to light one of the longest 
classical inscriptions yet discovered, written in as many 
as 670 lines. It consists of mortgage deeds by which 
large sums were lent by the Emperor on landed property 
throughout some districts near Placentia. The names of 
the several farms and owners, and the various amounts, 
were specified in great detail, and the interest at five per 
cent, was to be paid over to a fund for the maintenance 
of poor boys and girls whose number and pensions were 
defined. Fragments of a like inscription have been 
found since then at Beneventum, and we have reason 
to believe that throughout Italy there were similar pro¬ 
visions for a measure which history speaks of in quite 
general terms. 

In this there are several things that call for notice. 
First as to the end proposed. In Rome itself there had 
been for two centuries a sort of poor law system, by 
which many thousands of the citizens had received their 
monthly dole of corn. No Emperor had been rash 
enough to repeal this law, though thoughtful statesmen 
mourned over the lazy able-bodied paupers crowded in 
the capital, and the discouragement to industry abroad. 


20 


The Age of the A/itonines. 


A.D. 


The custom in old times had grown out of no tenderness 
of charity, but from the wish to keep the populace in 
good humour at the expense of the provincials who had 
to pay the cost, and in later times it was kept up from 
fear of the riots that might follow if the stream ceased 
to flow. But in all parts there were helpless orphans, or 
children of the destitute and disabled, to whom the 
„ , world was hard and pitiless, and for whom 

The novelty . f , ’ 

and use of real chanty was needed. From these the 

actual government had nothing to hope, 
nothing to fear, and to care for these was to recognise a 
moral duty which had never been owned on a large 
scale by any ruler before Trajan. There was yet this 
further reason to make their claim more pressing, in 
that it rested with the father’s will to expose or rear the 
new-born babe. Infanticide was sadly common as hope 
and industry declined, and good land was passing into 
desert from want of hands to till the soil. There was 
no fear then that the increase of population should out¬ 
run the means of living; but there was danger that the 
selfish or improvident should decline the cares of father¬ 
hood, hurry out of life again those whom 
shownl'n^he P they had called into the world, or leave 
endowment them to struggle at haphazard through the 
tender years of childhood. As to the end 
therefore we may say that tender-heartedness was shown 
in caring for the young and helpless, and also states¬ 
manship in trying to rear more husbandmen to till the 
fields of Italy. The coins and monuments bring both of 
these aims before our eyes, sometimes portraying Trajan 
as raising from the ground women kneeling with their 
little ones, at other times referring to the methods by 
which he had provided for the eternity of his dear 
Italy. 


97-H7- 


Trajan. 


21 


As to means, again, we may note the measures taken 
to set on foot a lasting system. Payments from the 
treasury made by one ruler might have been withdrawn 
by his successor; personal caprice or the pressure of 
other needs might cause the funds to be withheld, and 
starve the charitable work. The endowment therefore 
took the form of loans made to the landowners through¬ 
out the country, and the interest was paid by them to a 
special Bounty Office, for which commissioners were 
named each year to collect and to dispense the sums 
accruing. There was also this advantage in the course, 
that the landed interest gained by the new capital em¬ 
ployed upon the soil, while needful works, brought to a 
standstill for the want of funds, could be pushed forward 
with fresh vigour, to multiply the resources of the 
country. 

Lastly, we may be curious to know something more of 
the results. The government had done so much that 
it might well have been expected that the 

Others 3 .ct 

work would be taken up by other hands, and in a like 
that kindly charities of the same sort would 
spread fast among the wealthy. And some did copy the 
fashion set them from above. Pliny in his letters tells us 
how he had acted in like spirit, by saddling some estates 
with a rent charge which was always to be spent on the 
maintenance of poor boys and girls, and we may still 
read an inscription in which the town of Como gives him 
thanks for the kindly charity of his endowment. His 
beneficence dates probably in its earliest form from 
Nerva’s reign, but others seemingly began to follow the 
example of their rulers, for the legal codes speak of 
it as a practice not uncommon; and each of the three 
Emperors who followed gave something to help on 
the cause, in the interest more often of the girls than of 


22 


A.D. 


The Age of the A ntonines. 

the bovs, because perhaps they had been less cared for 
hitherto, and at their birth Roman fathers more often 
refused to bear the expense of rearing them. 

But in the darker times that were presently in store, 
later rulers found the treasury bankrupt, and laid greedy 
hands upon the funds which for a century had helped so 
many through the years of helplessness, and all notice 
of them vanishes at last from history in the strife and 
turmoil of the ages of decline. 

The beneficence of former rulers, we have seen, took 
the questionable form of monthly doles of corn to the 
populace of Rome. To fill the granaries and 
stock the markets of the capital they had 
the tribute paid in kind by the great corn¬ 
bearing provinces. They had bought up 
large quantities of grain and fixed an arbitrary scale of 
prices, had forbidden the export of produce to any but 
Italian ports, and had watched over Egypt with a jealous 
care as the storehouse of the empire, in which at first no 
Roman noble might even land without a passport. But 
Trajan had the breadth of view to begin a more enlight¬ 
ened policy. He trusted wholly to free trade to balance 
the supply and the demand, declined to fix a legal maxi¬ 
mum for what he bought, and trusted the producers to 
bring the supplies in their own way to Rome. Egypt it¬ 
self was suffering from a dearth because the Nile refused 
to rise ; but happily elsewhere the failure of her stores 
was lightly felt, for, thanks to the freedom of the carry¬ 
ing trade, other rich countries stepped into her place, and 
after keeping the markets of Italy supplied, even fed 
Egypt with the surplus. 

Trajan s treatment of provincial interests showed the 
same large-minded policy. A curious light is thrown 
upon the subject by the letters written to him by Pliny 


The po’icy 
of Trajan 
with regard 
to the corn 
trade. 


97 _11 7- 


Trajan . 


23 


His treat¬ 
ment of pro¬ 
vincial in¬ 
terests as 
shown in the 
correspond¬ 
ence with 
Pliny, a.d. 
hi. 

Municipal 
liberties 
existed on 
sufferance; 


while governor of Bithynia, and these are still left for us 
to read, together with the Emperor’s replies. 

First we may notice by their help how 
large a range of local freedom and self-go¬ 
vernment remained throughout the Roman 
empire. Though in that distant province 
there were few citizens of the highest class, 
and scarcely any municipia or colonies, yet 
the currents of free civic life flowed strongly. 

Popular assemblies, senates, and elected 
magistrates managed the affairs of every 
petty town ; the richest men were proud to serve their 
countrymen in posts of honour, and to spend largely of 
their means in the interest of all. But these privileges, 
though in some few cases guaranteed by special treaty 
dating from the times of conquest, had commonly no le¬ 
gal safeguard to secure them ; they lasted on by suffer¬ 
ance only, because the Roman governors had neither 
will nor leisure to rule all the details of social life around 
them. The latter had, however, large powers of interfe¬ 
rence, subject only to appeal to Rome; and 
if they were passionate or venal they abused 
their power to gratify caprice or greed, 
though often called to account for their mis¬ 
deeds when their term of office had expired. 
Conscientious rulers were also tempted to 
meddle or dictate, sometimes from the strong man’s in¬ 
stinctive grasp of power, sometimes from impatience of 
disorder and confusion, or from a love of symmetry and 
uniformity of system ; and above all it seemed their 
duty to step in to prevent such waste or misuse of public 
funds as might burden future ages or dry the sources of 
the streams that fed the imperial treasury. 

Pliny was a talker and a student rather than a man 


provin¬ 

cial 

governors 
were often 
tempted to 
interfere 
with them, 


24 


The Age cf the Antonines. 


A. I). 


of action, and feeling the weight of power heavy, he 
leant upon the Emperor for support and guidance. Not 
content with referring to his judgment all grave ques¬ 
tions, he often wrote on things of very little 
moment. “ Prusa has an old and dirty 
bath; may not the town enlarge it on a 
scale more worthy of the credit of the city 
and the splendour of your reign?” “The 
aqueduct at Nicomedia is in ruins, though large sums 
have been wasted more than once upon the works. As 
they really are in want of water, would it not be well to 
see that they spend their money wisely, and use up the 
old materials as far as they will go,' though for the rest 
bricks will be cheaper than hewn stone ? ” “ The thea¬ 

tre and gymnasium at Nicaea have been very badly 
built, ought not an architect to be employed to see if 
they can be repaired without throwing good money after 
bad?” “ Nicomedia would like to enlarge the area of 
its market-place, but an old, half-ruined temple of the 
Great Goddess stops the way. Might it not be transferred 
to a new site, as I can find nothing in the form of con¬ 
secration to forbid it ? Also there has been great havoc 
done by fire of late in the same city for the want of en¬ 
gines and the men to work them ; would there be any 
danger in setting up a guild of firemen to meet like ca¬ 
ses in the future, if all due care is taken against possible 
abuses?” On some of these points indeed the Emperor 
might wish to be consulted, as they had to do with the 
power of the purse. But he read with more impatience 
the requests that Pliny made to him to have architects 
and surveyors sent from Rome to carry out the works : 
he reminded him that such artists were no specialty of 
Italian growth, but were trained more easily in Greece 
and Asia. Still more emphatic is the language in which 


as was 
Pliny, who 
refers even 
petty ques¬ 
tions to the 
Emperor. 


97“ T 1 7- 


Trajan. 


2 5 


he rebuked his minister’s ill-timed zeal, which would 
make light of the charters and traditions of the province. 
He tells him that it might be convenient, but would not 
be seemly, to force the town councillors, as he wished, 
to take up at interest on loan the public funds 
which were then lying idle; that the old wouldfre- 
privilege of Apamea to draw up its budget usages° C and 
for itself without control must be respected, not meddle 

needlessly, 

anomaly as it might seem. He has no wish, 
for the mere sake of symmetry, to set aside the variety 
of local usages as to the entrance fees paid on admission 
to the senates; and in general he repeats that he will 
have no wanton meddling with any rights based on real 
charters, or with any old-established customs. 

As we read the letters, we admire the cautious self- 
restraint of Trajan in refusing to allow smooth systems 
of centralized machinery to take the place 
of the motley aggregate of local usages ; but ? r cen tral- 

7 ° . i4e too fast. 

there are also to be noted some ominous to¬ 
kens for the future. If the gentle Pliny while in office 
under Trajan was tempted to propose despotic measures, 
would not other ministers be likely to go further in that 
course, with more favour from their master ? If the cen¬ 
tral government ha^ such watchful care already for the 
revenues of every town, would it not in time of need 
help itself freely to the funds which it had husbanded so 
jealously ? 

The answer to these questions would reveal in a later 
age two causes of the empire’s slow decline, the paraly¬ 
sis of the local energy which was displaced by central¬ 
ized bureaux, and the exhaustion of a society overbur¬ 
dened by taxation. 

Great as were Trajan’s merits in the arts of peace, the 
world knew him chiefly as a soldier, renewing after a 


26 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


The world 
knew most 
of Trajan’s 
military 
powers, 


century of disuse the imperial traditions of 
the early Caesars. The genius of Julius, 
the steady progress of the generals of Au¬ 
gustus, had carried the conquering arms of 
Rome into new lands, and pushed the frontiers forward 
till well-defined natural boundaries were reached. Since 
then there had been little effort to go onward, and save 
in the case of Britain, no conquest of importance had 
been made. The Emperors had kept their generals to 
the border camps, and had shown little taste for warlike 
enterprise; even those who, like Vespasian, had been 
trained as soldiers, found the round of official work task 
all their energies at Rome, or feared the risk of a long 
absence in a far-off province. Trajan had other views. 

It seemed to him perhaps that the machinery 
of central government was working smooth¬ 
ly and securely, while his own warlike qual¬ 
ities were rusting away for want of use. 
Policy might whisper that an empire won by force must 
be maintained by constant drill and timely energy, and 
that the spirit of the legions might grow faint if they were 
always cooped up in border camps in the dull routine of 
an inglorious service, while the neighbouring races of 
the north were showing daily a bolder and more threat¬ 
ening front. 

On the side of Germany indeed there was for a while 
no pressing danger. The hostile tribes were weakened 
by their internecine struggles, and the “Germania” of 
Tacitus, which was written early in this reign, records in 
tones of cruel triumph the bloody feuds which had al¬ 
most blotted from the book of nations the name of the 
once powerful Bructeri. But in the Roman ranks them¬ 
selves there had been license and disorder, and Trajan 
seems to have been sent by Domitian to hold the chief 


for, unlike 
earlier 
rulers, his 
policy was 
one of war. 


97-H7* 


Trajan. 


2 7 


command upon the Rhine, as a general who could be 
trusted to tighten the bauds of discipline and secure the 
wavering loyalty of the legions. One of their chiefs had 
lately risen in revolt against his master, and the mutiny, 
though soon put down, had left behind it a smouldering 
discontent and restlessness in the temper of the soldiers. 
The spirit of discipline had commonly declined at once 
when the highest posts were filled by weak 
and selfish generals, and it needed a strong 
and a resolute will to check the evils of mis¬ 
rule. He found work enough ready to his 
hand to last for years, and even the tidings 
of his great rise in life, and of the death of 
Nerva, did not tempt him for some time to 
leave his post of military duty. 

He left some enduring traces of his organizing care in 
the towns and fortresses which he founded or restored, 
and in the great line of defence which he strengthened 
on the frontier. On the site of the old camp or fort (cas- 
tra vetera) which was stormed by the Germans in the 
war of 67, he built the colony of Ulpia Trajana, the 
name of which reappears in the curious form of the 
“little Trov’’ in the early German poems, and helped to 
give currency to the old fancy that the Franks had come 
from Troy; while in a later age it changed to that of 
Xanten (urbs Sanctorum) as the supposed scene of the 
great massacre of Victor and his sainted followers by the 
Theban legion. Among the many scenes which he 
chose for colonies or castles, the most famous pro¬ 
bably in later times was that of Aquae (Baden-Baden) 
where many traces have been found of the legions 
which were serving under him, and of the soldiers who 
probably were often glad to take the waters there, like 
the invalids of later days. But the greatest works on 


On the side 
of Germany 
he had been 
content to 
strengthen 
the frontier 
with defen¬ 
sive works, 
and he did 
not care to 
return. 

A. d. 98. 


28 The Age of the Antonines. a.d. 

this side of the empire were carried on for the defence 
of the tithe grounds (“Agri decumates ”) between the 
Danube and the Rhine, to which colonists had been in¬ 
vited from all parts of Gaul with the offer of a free grant 
of lands, subject only to the payment of a tenth as rent- 
charge to the state. This corner was the weak place in 
the Roman border on the north, and as such needed 
special lines for its defence; Drusus and Tiberius had 
long ago begun to raise them, and they were now push¬ 
ed on with energy, and continued by succeeding rulers. 
The “ limes Romanorum ’’ ran along for many a mile from 
one great river to the other, with wall and dyke and pal¬ 
isade, and forts at short intervals to protect the works. 
Remains of them are still left here and there, scarcely 
injured by the wreck of ages, and are called in the pea¬ 
sants’ ficitois the “ Devil’s Wall ” or “ Heathens’ Dyke,” 
and many more fantastic names. Ages after Trajan some 
of the defences of this country still bore his name in his¬ 
tory as well as local fancy, and witnessed to his energy 
in office; and modern travellers have fancied, though 
with little reason, that ruins found near Mainz belonged 
to a stone bridge built by him across the Rhine, on the 
same plan as the famous one upon the Danube. 

His work in Germany was done so thoroughly before 
he left that he never needed to return. But on the 
But his Danube there was soon a pressing call for 

presence resolute action, and the Emperor answered 

seemed • 

needed on it without delay. The people scattered on 

the Danube. both sides of the lower Danube appear in 

history under many names, of which the most familiar 
are Thracians, Getse, Dacians ; but all seemingly were 
members of the same great race. They had come often 
into hostile contact with the powers of Greece and Rome, 
till at last, under Augustus, all the southern tribes were 


97-H7- 


Trajan . 


29 


brought into subjection, and their land, under the name 
of Mcesia, became a Roman province. Their kinsmen 
on the north retained their independence, Th . 
and the Dacian peoples had been lately the Dacian 
drawn together and welded into a formida- kingdom ’ 
ble nation by the energy of Decebalus, their chieftain. 
Not content with organizing a powerful kingdom within 
the mountain chains of Transylvania, he had sallied from 
his natural fastness and crossed the Danube to spread 
havoc among the villages of Moesia. Domitian had 
marched in person to the rescue, but found too late that 
he had neither the soldier’s daring nor the general’s skill, 
and was glad to purchase an inglorious peace by the 
rich presents that the Dacians looked upon as tribute. 
Artists also and mechanics were demanded to spread the 
arts of Roman culture in the north, for Decebalus was no 
mere barbarian of vulgar aim, but one who had the in¬ 
sight to see the advantages of civilized ways, and to 
meet his rivals with the weapons drawn from their own 
armoury. Emboldened by success he raised 
his terms, and took a threatening attitude ^ e d c ‘j^g S of 
upon the Danube, presuming on the weak¬ 
ness of the timid Domitian and the aged Nerva. But 
Trajan was in no mood to brook such insults, and when 
asked for the usual presents he haughtily replied that he 
at least had not been conquered ; then hearing of fresh 
insults, and of intrigues with the neighbouring races, and 
even with the distantTarthians, he resolved 
on war, and set out himself to secure the safety ^reTwar 
and avenge the honour of the empire. With and set out. 
him went his young kinsman Hadrian as 
aide-de-camp (comes expeditionis Dacicae), and the 
trusted Licinius Sura was always by his side in the 
campaign, while the ablest generals of the age were 


\ 


30 The Age of the Autonines. a.d. 


gathered on the scene of action to win fresh laurels in 
the war. 

He had passed, it seems, unchanged through the lux¬ 
urious life of Rome, and kept all the hardihood of his 
earlier habits. His old comrades saw him march bare¬ 
headed and on foot, taking his full share of danger and 
discomfort, joining in the mock fight which varied the 
sameness of the march, or ready to give and take hard 
blows without thought of personal dignity or safety. So 
retentive was his memory that he learnt, as it is said, the 
names and faces even of the common soldiers of the 
legions, could speak to them of their deeds of valour or 
of their honourable wounds, and make each feel that he 
was singled out for special notice. It was, they saw, 
no mere holiday campaign such as Emperors had some¬ 
times come from. Rome to witness, with its parade of un¬ 
real victories and idle triumphs, but the stern reality -of 
war under a commander trained in life-long service, 
like the great generals of earlier days. Full of reliance 
in their leader, and in the high tone of discipline which he 
restored, they were eager to begin the strife and looked 
forward to success as sure. 


For details of the progress of the war we may look in 
vain to the histories of ancient writers. The 
chapters of Dion Cassius which treated of 
it have come down to us only in a meagre 
summary. Later epitomists compress into a 
page the whole story of the reign. Monu¬ 
mental evidence indeed gives more details. 
The bridges, fortresses, and road works of Trajan 
stamped themselves in local names upon the common 
language of the country, and left enduring traces which 
remain even to this day. We may track the course of 
the invading legions by the inscriptions graven by 


For details of 
the war we 
must look to 
monuments 
more than to 
the ancient 
writers. 

































Iicf/ina 


i u$t(M I 

l( lelicoruti 


'l>a nub / 


Ocilava o 


wigant inAs 


l«'uni 




J uvuctim 

ft '■ : 


\*. 9 "n(iun 


^Amibona/% 
/2 J 






i:«a 

■iLWAMfcj 




gt4o 


Mogenlklfuf *" 


iitaevisa 


SaMntr 


Porto rift 


Muffin 


.HUM 


„,.fl7nlnl,i 


Sopiana 


Aquilefa 


Dautonia 


dicer 


Bersovb 




Jfarsonia 


Sirmiuui 


mrajans 
< hi e 


TauruiKitM 


^AdriatiounT 


i\Gensa 


’Sttcidavu 




>\ V>, 

rf/Miriw 


T>i»l rf 


{HOnonia 


Ratiarta 


Variana 


y 


«ias> 




THE BORDER LANDS 

upon tlie 

DANUBE 










_ P h 


i V • y» 




Ruistll A Struth*ri N- y. 


























































































97-H7- 


Trajan. 


31 


pious fingers to the memory of the comrades who had 
fallen; and the cunning hands of artists have bodied 
forth to fancy in a thousand varied forms scene after 

scene in the progress of the conquering armies. But 

« 

even with such help we can draw at best 

1 I he course 

but the outline of the campaigns, and can- of the 
- not hope for any definite precision. The 
forces that had made their way through Pannonia by 
different routes, were first assembled probably at Seges- 
tica (Sissek) on the Save, which Strabo speaks of as 
the natural starting point for a war in Dacia, and which 
had long before been strongly fortified for such a purpose. 
Here boats could be drawn together and sent down the 
stream for future use, while on the road along the river’s 
banks, at which the legionaries of Tiberius had toiled 
already, new magazines and forts were formed to protect 
their communications in the rear, and letters carved 
upon the rocks near Ogradina tell us of the energy of 
Trajan’s engineers. Moving steadily to the eastward 
they at last crossed the Danube at two points between 
Belgrade and Orsova, probably at Viminacium and 
Tierna, at each of which a bridge of boats was made 
where the stream was at its narrowest. 

With one half of the army the Emperor crossed in 
person, the other was left to the command of Lusius 
Quietus, a Moor, the most tried and trusty of his gene¬ 
rals. The invaders were to move at first by separate 
roads, but to converge at the entrance of the single 
mountain pass which led to the stronghold of the 
Dacians. The enemy, meantime, had made no effort to 
molest them on their march, or to bar their way across 
the river. 

Envoys came, indeed, as if to treat for peace; but it 
was remarked that they were men only of mean rank, who 


32 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


A.D. 102. 


wore long hair and went bareheaded, and 
they were sent away unheeded. Forged 
despatches, too, were brought as if from neighbouring 
peoples to urge him to make peace and to be gone ; but 
Trajan, suspecting treachery, was resolute and wary, 
and in the spring pushed steadily forward on his way. 
Ambassadors arrived once more, this time of the higher 
rank that gave the privilege of wearing hats upon their 
heads, like the Spanish grandees who by special grace 
might be covered in the presence of the king. Through 
them Decebalus, their master, sued for mercy, and 
offered to submit to any terms that the ministers of 
Trajan might impose. It was, however, only to gain 
time, for he would not meet the Roman envoys, but 
suddenly appeared in arms, and springing upon the 
legions on their march, closed with them at 
of^Tapae^* Tapre in a desperate engagement. The 
combatants were fairly matched, and fought 
on with a desperate valour, for each knew that their 
sovereign was present in their ranks. The Dacians 
at length were routed, but the victory was dearly bought, 
for the battle-field was strewn with the dying and the 
dead; there was not even lint enough to dress the 
wounds, and the Emperor tore his own clothes to pieces 
to staunch the blood of the men who lay about him. 
The other army had been also waylaid upon its march, 
but beating its assailants back, it made its way to a junc¬ 
tion with the rest. 

They had been moving hitherto since they left the 
Danube in what is now called the Austrian Banat, from 
, which Transylvania, the centre of the old 

the advance J 1 

into Transvl- Dacian kingdom, is parted by a formidable 
v an ia 

barrier of mountains. One road alone passed 
through a narrow rift in the great chain, called the Iron 


97-H7- 


Trajan . 


33 


Gate, either from the strength of the steep defiles or from 
the neighbouring mines. Through these the Romans 
had to pass, like the travellers of later days. A less de¬ 
termined leader might have shrunk from the hazardous 
enterprise before him ; but Trajan pushed resolutely on, 
seized the heights with his light troops, and by dint of 
hard fighting cleared a passage through the mountains. 

Where the narrow valley widens out into the open 
country in the Hatszeger Thai, the camp may still be 
seen where the Romans lay for a while entrenched to 
rest after the hardships of the march before 
they joined battle with Decebalus once Stories 111 
more. Sarmizegethusa (Varhely), the strong¬ 
hold of the Dacian chieftain, was now threatened, and in 
its defence the nation made its last decisive stand. 
Once more, after hard fighting, they gave way, and re¬ 
sistance now seemed hopeless. The spirit of their king 
was broken, for his sister in a strongly guarded fort had 
fallen into the invader’s power, and a last embassy of 
notables was sent, with their hands tied behind their 
backs, in token of entire submission. Hard terms of 
peace were offered and accepted. The Dacian was to 
raze his strongholds to the ground, to give up his con¬ 
quests from the neighbouring peoples, and to send back 
the artists, mechanics, and drill sergeants who had been 


enticed across the border to teach the arts 

bring the first 

of peace and war. He consented even to wartoaciose. 
send his deputies to beg the Roman senate A ‘ D ‘ io2 ' 
to ratify the treaty now agreed on, and stooped so far as 
to come himself to Trajan’s presence, to do homage to 
his conqueror. 

The war had spread over two years already, and it 
was hazardous for the emperor to linger so far and so 
long away from Rome. But he could not well have 

D 


34 


The Age of the Anionines. 


A.D. 


hoped that the struggle was quite ended. Decebalus 

had been humbled but not crushed; his own kingdom 

of Transylvania had not been overrun, and his people 

were brave and loyal still. He might fairly count on the 

alliance of his neighbours on the east, and even of the 

Parthians, who were brought together by their jealousy 

of Rome. Soon it was heard that he was stirring to 

avenge his recent losses. The dismantled fortresses 

were rebuilt and garrisoned afresh; lukewarm friends 

or deserters from his cause were made to feel his power, 

and all his skill in diplomacy was strained to organize a 

_ . league of warlike nations, and dispose of 

But the ° . 

peace did nc* their forces in the field. Then Trajan knew 

war broke ” 1 he must delay no longer if he would not see 

out again. the wor k c f y ears crumble into pieces ; so 

after a breathing space of a few months he set out once 
more for the old scene of action, resolved to turn Dacia 
at last into a tributary province. 

He had first to meet treachery before open force was 
tried. Assassins were sent to take his life in Moesia 
and when the murderous project failed, Longinus, the 
commander of a contingent, was decoyed under the 
plea of a conference with the Dacian chief, who seized 
and held him captive with the threat that he would only 
give him back alive if the legions were withdrawn and 
peace secured. The high-souled Roman had no wish to 
buy his safety with his country’s loss ; he would not even 
expose his sovereign to the cruel embarrassment of 
choice, but hastened to meet the inevitable 
death. It was left to Trajan to avenge him. 
His plan of the campaign was soon ma¬ 
tured, and the needful preparations set on 
foot. Of these the greatest was the bridge 
across the Danube. Not content with 


Trajan 
made great 
preparations 
and built a 
bridge of 
stone across 
the Danube. 


97-H7- 


Trajan. 


35 


having one or more of boats, such as was soon made in 
the last war, he resolved to build upon a grander 
scale a bridge of stone, or possibly to finish one which 
had been begun already in the course of the first war, 
that so he might be secured in his retiyn against frost or 
a sudden blow. Dion Cassius, who as governor of Pan- 
nonia in later years could see so much of the work as 
time had spared, writes strongly in the expression of his 
wonder, and regards it as the greatest of the Emperor’s 
creations. Each, he says, of the twenty piers on which 
the arches rested was 60 feet in breadth and 150 high, 
without taking count of the foundations. It was in ruins 
in his time ; but the mighty piers were standing to show 
the greatness of Trajan’s aims and the skill of his engi¬ 
neer Apollodorus. Between the Wallachian Turn- 
Severin near the town of Czernetz and the Servian Cla- 
dova, remains may still be seen of what was probably 
once the famous bridge. From this point along the 
right bank of the river runs an old Roman road which 
the Wallachs still call Trajan’s highway, and passing 
through a mountain gorge it may be traced as far as 
Hermannstadt. Where it entered the Car- , . 

1 he legions 

pathians it was fortified by works of which converged on 
the “Red Tower’’ gives its name to the hyvanous' 118 ’ 
whole pass, while “Trajan’s Gate ” is still P asses 
standing in memory of his invading army. But the 
work was to be done thoroughly this time, and the ene¬ 
my to be taken on all sides. The advan¬ 
cing legions tramped along every great road A ‘ D ‘ IOS ' 
which from the south or west converged on the little 
Dacian kingdom that lay entrenched within its fence of 
mountains. Through the Iron Gates and the Volcan 
Pass and the gorge of the Red Tower they stormed the 
defences raised to bar their way, and after many a hard 


36 


The Age of the A?itonines. 


A.D. 


struggle swept their enemies before them by the sheer 
weight of steady discipline, till at last they stood in the 
heart of the Dacian kingdom. 

The league on which Decebalus had counted came to 


and looked-for 


nothing: old adherents slunk away, 

allies had stood aloof, so that he was left to 


and after obsti¬ 
nate fightiug 
crushed the 
Dacian power. 
A.D. 106. 


fight on unaided to the bitter end. Tracked 
like a wild beast from lair to lair, he saw 
one after another of his castles wrested from 
him, and only when his chief stronghold could hold out no 
longer, did he close the struggle by a voluntary death. 

Many of his loyal followers were faithful to him to the 
last, and setting fire to their homes passed from hand to 
hand the poisoned cup, unwilling to survive the freedom 
of the country which they loved. 

When the last city had been stormed, the treasures of 
the fallen Dacian, in spite of his precautions, passed in¬ 
to the victor’s hands. In vain had he turned aside the 
stream Sargetia (Istrig) from its bed, and had a secret 
chamber for his hoards built in the dry channel by his 
prisoners of war. In vain had he, so ran the story, re¬ 
stored the current to its former bed, and butchered the 
captives when their work was done. One friend and 
confidant alone was left alive, but he was languishing in 
Roman bonds, and told the story to buy life or favour. 

The war was over; the kingdom of Dacia had ceased 
to be, and it remained only to organize the conquest. 
No time was lost in completing and extending the great 
roads which led from the points where Trajan’s bridges 
had been built. Strong works were raised 
for their defence as they entered the moun¬ 
tain passes, and fortresses to command their 
outlets from the highlands, while in the cen¬ 
tral spots on which the highways converged, 


To complete 
the conquest 
the country 
was colon¬ 
ised and 
garrisoned, 


97 _11 7* 


Trajan. 


37 


new towns rose apace with Romanized names and 
charters of Italian rights. Many of the old inhabitants 
who had escaped the horrors of the war had left their 
ruined homesteads, and bidding farewell for ever to 
their country, had sought a shelter among the kindred 
races to the east; but their place was taken by the vet¬ 
erans, who were rewarded for their hardihood with pen¬ 
sions and with land, while yet further to make good the 
waste of life throughout the ravaged country, colonists 
came streaming at the Emperor’s call from all the border 
provinces, which were still full of hardy peasants only 
lately brought within the range of Roman influence, but 
now ready in their turn to be the pioneers of civilized 
progress in the far-off Carpathian valleys. After them, 
or even with the armies, went the engineers, the archi¬ 
tects, the artists of the older culture. Temples and baths, 
aqueducts and theatres rose speedily among the town¬ 
ships, and monuments of every kind are strewn over the 
land, so that few regions have had more to tell the anti¬ 
quarian than this last corner in the Roman empire. 
Strange to say, even the ancestral faith of the conquered 
Dacians was lost to view, and while the inscriptions 
found among their ruins bear witness to the exotic rites 
of eastern deities which now took root among them, 
there are no tokens seemingly of the old national religion. 

Nor are there wanting still more enduring traces of the 
conquest to show how thoroughly the work was done. 
Though soon exposed to the pressure of invading races 
in the gradual disruption of the Roman an( j t ^ e j an 
world, and torn away completely from the 
rest before two centuries had passed, though 
scourged and pillaged ruthlessly by the 
Goths and Huns, the Slavs and Mongols, 
who swept the land by turns and drove its 


guage of old 
Rome survives 
in the Wall- 
achian or Rou¬ 
manian to 
show how 
abiding was 
her influence. 


38 


The Age of the Antonmes. 


AD. 


The monu¬ 
ment of the 
Dacian 
victory in 
Trajan’s 
forum. 

A.D. 112. 


people to their mountain homes, it still clung to the 
memory of Trajan, and gave his name to many a mon¬ 
ument of force and greatness, while the language of old 
Rome planted by his colonists survived the rude shock 
of barbarous war and the slow process of decay, and as 
spoken by the mouths of the Roumans and the Wallachs 
of the Danube still proves its undoubted sisterhood 
with the French or the Italian of our day. 

To commemorate the glory of successes which had 
given to the empire a province of 1,000 miles in circuit, 
a monument at Rome seemed needed on a 
scale of corresponding grandeur. To find 
room for it a space was cleared on the high 
ridge which ran between the Capitoline and 
the Quirinal hills. Within this space a new 
forum was laid out, and the skill of Apoll- 
odorus, the great designer of the age, was tasked 
to adorn it worthily. At the entrance rose the triumphal 
arch, of which some of the statuary and bas-reliefs may 
still be seen in the arch of Constantine, although disfig¬ 
ured by the tasteless additions of a latter age. Opposite 
was built the great basilica, one of the covered colonnades 
which served then for an exchange and law-court, and of 
which the name was borrowed from the portico at Athens, 
while the form lasted on to set the type of the early Chris¬ 
tian churches. In the centre of the forum, as in the place 
of honour, was a statue of the Emperor on horseback. 
All around in every corner were statues and warlike em¬ 
blems of the conquest, to which the later emperors added 
in their turn, till art sunk under Constantine too low to 
do more than spoil the ornaments which it borrowed. 
Close by was the great library, rich above all others in 
statute law and jurisprudence, and graced with the busts 
of all the undying dead in art and literature and science. 


97-H7- 


Traian. 

•* 


39 


Far above all towered Trajan’s famous column, the 
height of which, 128 feet in all, marked the quantity of 
earth which had been cleared away below } 
the level of the hill in the place of which the phai column, 
forum stood. Twenty-three blocks of mar- D ‘ 1I3 ' 
ble only are piled upon each other to make up the col¬ 
umn’s shaft, round which winds in spiral form the long 
series of sculptured groups, which give us at once a live¬ 
ly portraiture of the details of Roman warfare and all 
the special incidents of the Dacian campaigns. Though 
we have often little clue to time or place or actual cir¬ 
cumstance, still we can follow from the scenes before us 
the invading army on the march, see them cross each 
river on their bridge of boats, force their way through 
rock and forest, storm and burn the strongholds of the 
enemy, and bring the spoils of war to grace the triumph 
of their leader. We can distinguish the trousered Da¬ 
cians with their belted tunics, skirmishing outside their 
quarters, over which flies the national symbol of the dra¬ 
gon, while the stockades are decked with the ghastly 
skulls torn from their fallen enemies. Their ferocity is 
pictured to our fancy in the scene where the Roman 
corpses are mangled on their chariot wheels, or where 
their women gather round the captive legionary and 
hold the lighted torches to his limbs. We see them 
sue for pardon with their outstretched hands, or wend 
their way in sad procession from their homes, with 
wives and children, flocks and herds, turning their 
backs upon their devastated country, or when driven 
like wild beasts to bay, crowd round the poisoned goblet 
and roll in the agonies of death upon the ground. 

This monument, the crowning glory of the splendid 
forum, is left to us well nigh unscathed by the ravages 
of time, save that the gilding and the colours have 


40 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


Only the 
column is 
left of the 
scene on 
which Con- 
stantius 
looked with 
admiration. 
Ammian. 
Marcell, 
xvi. 10. 


faded almost wholly from the sculpture, 
and that Trajan’s statue which once took 
its stand by natural right upon the top 
has been replaced by that of the Apostle 
Paul. Little remains to us of all the rest, 
but we may judge somewhat of our loss by 
the terms in which an old historian describes 
the scene as it first met the eyes of the 
Emperor Constantius at his entry into Rome two centu¬ 
ries later. He gazed with wonder, we are told, at the 
historic glories of the ancient city, but when he came to 
Trajan’s forum he stood speechless for awhile with 
admiration at a work which seemed to rise far above 
the power of words to paint or the art of later days to 
copy. In despair of doing anything so great as what he 
looked on, he said at last that he would rest content 
with having a horse made to match the one which 
carried Trajan. But Hormisdas, a Persian noble who 
was standing at his side, said, “ It would be well to build 
the stable first, for your horse should be lodged as 
royally as the one which we admire.’’ 


While the conquering eagles were thus 
JftSST borne over new lands in the far north, the 
frontier line was also carried forward on the 
south. Cornelius Palma, the regent of Syria marched 
over the sandy deserts of Arabia, which had never 
seen the arms ot Rome since drought and pestilence 
beat back the soldiers of Augustus. The country of the 
Idumaean Petra was subdued, and imperial 
A.D.io 5 to coins of this period pourtray Arabia in 

woman’s form offering to Trajan incense 
and perfumes in token of submission, while the fame 
of these successes brought embassies to sue for peace 
from countries hitherto unknown. 


97-H7- 


Trajan. 


4i 


The triumph that followed all these victories was one 
of extraordinary splendour and ferocity. For one hun¬ 
dred and twenty days the long round of bloody specta¬ 
cles went on : wild beasts of every kind died by thousands 
in the circus, and the prisoners of war fenced with each 
other in their bloody sport till the idle populace was grati¬ 
fied and sated by the offering of some ten thousand lives. 

And now for years Trajan and the world had peace, 
broken only perhaps by a short campaign against the 
Parthians, to which some questionable evidence of med¬ 
als and church writers seems to point, although secular 
history is wholly silent on the subject. 

There was enough indeed to occupy his thoughts 
meantime. The cares of office on so vast a scale, the 
oversight of so much ministerial work, the grandiose 
constructions in the capital and throughout Italy, the 
plans tor usefulness and charity described already, 
formed labour enough for any single mind. There was 
no fear therefore that his powers should rust away from 
inaction in a time of peace. But there might possibly be 
dangers of another sort. To this period belong seem¬ 
ingly the rumours of traitorous designs and plots against 
his life, to which he gave indeed no open credence, 
but loftily professed his disregard, which may, however, 
have ruffled the calm even of his resolute nature, 
and sickened him of longer stay at Rome. For there 
was something feverish in the life of the great city ; the 
air was charged with thunder clouds which might burst at 
any moment. Few of the rulers who had lived before him 
but had cause to fear the fickle passions of the populace or 
guards, or the jealousy of unscrupulous intriguers. 

Once more therefore he resolved on war, in part per¬ 
haps from the feelings of disquietude at home, in part it 
may be from the overweening sense of absolute power, 


42 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


against 

Parthia. 

A.D. IJ3. 


and the restlessness of the great conqueror, spurred on 
by his ambition for more glory 

There was one rival only of historic name, the Par¬ 
thian empire of the east, and with that it was not hard 
to pick a quarrel. Its sovereign Chosroes 
War declared ^ad lately claimed to treat Armenia, as a 
dependent fief, and had set a nephew of his 
own upon the throne, though the Romans 
had long looked upon it as a vassal kingdom, and Nero 
as a suzerain had set the crown upon its prince’s head. 
No time was lost in resenting the affront, and instant war 
was threatened if the intruder did not withdraw his forces 
from Armenia, and leave the new-made monarch to his 
fate. The pretext was caught at the more gladly, as 
on this side only of the empire was the frontier line 
still undecided, and an organized power was left in arms 
to menace the boundaries of Rome. 

Once more the note of preparation sounded for the 
war, the arsenals were all astir, and the tramp of the ad¬ 
vancing legions was heard along the highways of the 
east. Before long the Emperor himself was on his way 
to take the field in person with his troops ; but at Athens 
where he halted for a time, he was met by the am¬ 
bassadors who came to sue for peace and offer presents, 
and beg him in their master’s name to accept the hom¬ 
age of another kinsman in place of the one who had 
already forfeited the kingdom which was given him. 
For the Parthians were no longer in the heyday of their 
national vigour, as when they shattered the hosts of 
Crassus on the fatal field of Carrhae, or swept almost 
without a check through western Asia and drove M. 
Antonius back from a fruitless and inglorious campaign. 
Three centuries ago they had made themselves a name 
in history by humbling the dynasty of Syria; the energy 




































































■ • 








































Trajan. 


9 7-i 17 . 


43 


of conquest had carried them from their highland homes 
and sent the thrones of Asia toppling down 
before them, till all from the Euphrates Strength was 
to the Oxus and Hydaspes owned their *; hen in lts 

• r decay. 

sway ; but now the tide had spent its force 
and the great empire was slowly sinking to decay. 
Like the Turks of later days they had no genius to 
organize or to create, but were at bes>t an aristocracy of 
warlike clans, lording it over subject peoples, full of 
their pride of race and barbarous disdain of all the arts 
of civilized progress, encamped awhile among the great 
historic cities of the past, but only to waste and to de¬ 
stroy. The currents of the national lifeblood now flowed 
feebly ; the family feuds of the Arsacidae, the ruling 
line, threatened to distract their forces, and they could 
scarcely make good with the sword their right to what 
the sword alone had won. 

Trajan knew possibly something of their weakness, 
or expressed only the self-reliance of his own strong 
will, when he answered the envoys in a haughty strain, 
telling them that friends were secured by deeds and not 
by fair words, and that he would take such action as 
seemed good when he arrived upon the scene. From 
Athens he went forward on his way to the fortress of 
Seleucia, the key of Syria, proud of the . 

. Trajan arrives 

memory of its famous siege, and of the at Antioch, 
gift of Roman freedom won by its stout de- ^ an ' A ' D ‘ II4 ‘ 
fence against Tigranes. Thence he marched to the 
neighbouring Antioch, in whose crowded streets the so¬ 
cial currents of the East and West were blended, the 
city where the name of Christian was first heard, but 
where also the cypress groves of Daphne were the 
haunts of infamous debauchery in religion’s name. 
Thither came ambassadors to ask for peace; the satraps 


44 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


and petty chieftains met him on his way, and swore 
fealty to their lord and master. 

He passed on to the Euphrates, and no one appeared 
in arms to bar his road. The new Arsacid in Armenia, 

, , so lately seated on the throne, had sent al- 

and marches 

through ready more than once to Trajan. But his 

first letter was written in lofty style as to a 
brother king, and was therefore left without an answer; 
the second struck a lower note, and offered to do homage 
through the governor of a neighbouring province. Even 
this the Emperor scarcely deigned to notice, would not 
even for a time displace the official from his post, but 
merely sent the governor’s son to bear this answer. 

Before long the legions in their march had crossed 
the confines of Armenia; the towns by which they 
passed were occupied without a blow, and the princely 
Parthamasiris was summoned to his master’s presence 
, ,. in the heart of a country that was lately all 

whose king 

Parthamasiris, his own. There on a lofty seat sat Trajan 
camp to Vo on the earth-works raised for the entrench- 
homage ; ments of the camp, while the legions stood 

around as on parade. The prince bowed low before the 
throne, and laid his diadem before the Emperor’s feet, 
then waited silently in hope to see it replaced with 
graceful courtesy upon his head. But he hoped and 
waited all in vain; the soldiers who stood near raised 
a shout of triumph at his act of self-abasement, and 
startled at the din he turned as if in act to fly, but only 
to find himself girt in by armed battalions, from whom 
escape seemed hopeless. Regaining self-control he 
begged to be received in private interview; but baffled 
of his hopes, he turned at last with anger and despair to 
quit the camp. Before he had gone far he was recalled, 
brought once more before the throne, and bidden to 


97-i 17 . 


Trajan. 


45 


C. Fronto, 
Princ. Hist. 


make his suit in the hearing of the legions. Then at 
last the chieftain’s pride took fire, and he gave his in¬ 
dignation vent. He came, he said, not as ^ de 
a conquered foeman or an humble vassal, posed, and 
but of his free choice to court the majesty auempuecTto* 16 
of Rome. He had laid his crown down as resist - 
a token of respect, but looked to have his kingdom given 
him again, as to Tiridates in like case from Nero’s hands. 
The Emperor’s reply was stern and brief. Armenia was 
to be henceforth a Roman province, and its line of kings 
was closed; but for the rest the ex-monarch and his 
followers might go safely where they pleased. But the 
Armenian prince was too high-spirited to 
yield without a struggle; he flew to arms, it 
seems, and was slain soon after at a word 
from Trajan, who had not generosity enough to spare 
the rival whom he had humbled. 

Then a panic spread through all the courts of Asia. 
From far-off regions, little known before, came humble 
offers of submission to the invader who was so master¬ 
ful and stern ; and wary intriguers, who had kept away 
before, found to their dismay that they could 
not longer play upon him with ambiguous 
words. The distant chiefs indeed were 
allowed to hold their own, but in all the 
country between the two great rivers in the 
track of the advancing army, the native princes were 
deposed and Roman governors took their place. 

Meantime the postal service had been organized with 
special care. On the great roads that led to Rome 
carriages and relays of horses conveyed the couriers with 
their state despatches; and the great city traced from 
week to week the course of the campaign through scenes 
beyond the range of their experience or fancy, listening 


General 
terror and 
submission 
in the 

neighbouring 

princes, 


46 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


with a lively wonder to the lengthening tale of bloodless 
conquests. The Senate vainly tried to find a list of fit- 
^ ting honours for their prince; they voted the 

triumph at solemn services and days of thanksgiving, 

Rome. and called him Parthicus as they had styled 

him Dacius after the last war, but above all other titles of 
their choice he prided himself the most on that of 
Optimus (the Best), linked as it was in popular fancy 
with the name of Jupiter, mightiest of the gods of Rome, 
and pointing as he seemed to think more to the graces 
of his character than to the glories of his arms. 

But the gladness of the general triumph, both at home 
and at the seat of war, was rudely broken by the tidings 
of a great disaster. While the soldiers were 
resting from their labours in their winter 
quarters, an earthquake of - appalling force 
shook many of the towns of Asia, and 
marked its power at Antioch by features of 
especial horror. The fair city was at all 
times a teeming hive of population ; mer¬ 
chants and mariners of every land were 
crowded in its port on the Orontes ; art and luxury and 
learning drew the votaries of fashion to the great Broad¬ 
way of Epiphanes which ran its level course four miles 
in length, with spacious colonnades on either side. But 
at this time especially the,Emperor’s presence brought 
a moie than usual concourse thither. Soldiers and 
courtiers, litigants and senators, sightseers and traders 
jostled each other in the streets and mingled the 
languages of East and West. The more fatal therefore 
was the sudden blow which carried sorrow and bereave¬ 
ment to men’s homes in every land. We need not 
dwell upon the too familiar features of all the great 
earthquakes that we.hear of. Here, too, we read of the 


But the 
great earth¬ 
quake at 
Antioch 
spread ruin 
and dismay 
among Tra¬ 
jan’s staff. 
Dec. 13, 

A.D. IT5. 

J. Malalas. 


97-i 17 . 


Trajan. 


47 


He took the 
field again, 
crossed 
the Tigris 
a.d. 116, 


mysterious rumblings underground, of the heaving and 
the rocking earth, of the houses crashing into ruins and 
burying their inmates in the wreck, of the few survivors 
disinterred at last from what might have been their 
tomb. It adds little to the genuine horrors of the scene 
to be told in the fanciful language of a later writer of the 
babe found sucking at the breast of the mother who was 
cold and dead, or of the unknown visitor of unearthly 
stature who beckoned the Emperor from the place of 
danger to the open ground within the circus, where he 
stayed for days till the earthquake passed away. 

But the thoughts of the soldiers were soon called away 
from these memories of gloom and desolation. In early 
spring once more the Emperor took the field 
with overwhelming forces. It was no easy 
task, indeed, to cross the rapid current of 
the Tigris in the face of an enemy drawn up 
in arms upon the bank, and in a country where no tim¬ 
ber grew for rafts. But through the winter months the 
highland forests had been felled far up the river ; ship¬ 
builders had been busy with their work, and boats were 
brought in pieces to the water’s edge, where they were 
joined together and floated down the stream to the point 
chosen for the passage. Then the flotillas suddenly ap¬ 
peared in swarms before the eyes of the startled natives, 
and manned by overpowering numbers, pushed rapidly 
across the river, and dislodged the thin lines carried 
that stood to bar the way. The Parthians, 
struck with panic at their resolute advance 
or distracted by civil feuds, were swept away before 
them, and scarcely fronted them again that year to strike 
a blow for independence. 

Onward the legions tramped in steady progress, but 
their march was a triumphal pageant. They neared the 


all before 
him. 


48 


The Age of .he Anfonines. 


A.D. 


ruins of Nineveh, capital of the Assyria of ancient story; 
passed by the battle-field of Arbela, where the pha- - 
lanx of Alexander routed the multitudinous hosts of Per¬ 
sia : at Babylon they saw the wonders done of old by 
the builders and engineers of early despots. Ctesiphon, 
with the winter palace of the Parthian king, fell into 
their hands, with the neighbouring Seleucia, that still re¬ 
tained the semblance of a shadowy republic, though a 
royal fortress towered above it. Not content with sweep¬ 
ing all before them in Assyria, they pushed onward yet 
to Susa, the old residence of Persian monarchs. The 
daughter of the Parthian king became a captive ; his 
throne of beaten gold was sent as a trophy to the Roman 
Senate, which heard the exciting tidings that one after 
another the great cities of historic fame had passed 
under the Emperor’s sway, who was following in the 
steps of Alexander and pining for more worlds to con¬ 
quer. Indeed, old as he was, he seemed 
and pushed possessed with the daring of adventurous 
the Persian youth. Taking ship, we read, on the Eu¬ 
phrates, he let the current bear him to its 
mouth, and there upon the shores of ocean saw the mer¬ 
chant-boats set sail for India, the land of fable and ro¬ 
mance, and dreamed of enterprises still to come in 
countries where the Roman eagles were unknown. 

But his career of triumph was now closed, and the 
few months of life which still were left to him were cloud¬ 
ed with the gloom of failure and disaster. While he 
was roaming as a knight-errant in quest of adventures 
far away, the conquered countries were in 
arms once more. The cities of Assyria rose 
against his garrisons as soon as the spell of 
his name and presence was removed; Ara¬ 
bia and Edessa flung off their allegiance ; 


But the 
lately con¬ 
quered 
countries 
rose in his 
rear. 


97-ii7* 


Trajan. 


49 


and the Jews of Cyrenaica, Egypt and Cyprus sprung in 
blind fury at their Roman masters, as if to avenge the 
cruelties practised long ago in Palestine by Titus. This 
fierce explosion of fanatic zeal from a people girt about by 
alien races was hopeless, of course, and sternly repressed 
with fire and sword. To secure his hold on Parthia the 
Emperor set up a puppet-king, and crowned him with 
great parade at Ctesiphon, but could not give him the 
right to claim or the force to secure the loyalty of an 
unwilling nation. His generals marched with dubious 
success against the cities that had risen in revolt, while 
he took field himself against a petty power 
of the south, whose only strength lay in the 
desert in which it was entrenched. He dis¬ 
played in the campaign all his old hardi¬ 
hood and valour, and led more than once 
his horsemen to the charge; but heat and 
drought and sickness baffled all his efforts, 
and drove him back at last with tarnished fame and ru¬ 
ined health. 

Once more he talked of marching to chastise the 
rebels in Chaldea, but his strength was failing fast, and 
it was time to leave the scenes where he had won so 
much of fruitless glory, and swept all before him like a 
passing storm. He set his face towards Italy upon his 
homeward way; but the long journey was too much for 
his enfeebled frame, and he sank down at Selintis in 
Cilicia, after nearly twenty years of monarchy and more 
than sixty of a stirring life. 

So died the strongest and the justest of the imperial 
rulers whom Rome had seen as yet. Only in the last 
war can we see the traces of the despot’s 
arrogance and vainglory. The Dacian cam¬ 
paigns might well seem needful to secure a 

E 


and he 
failed to 
regain his 
hold upon 
them before 
his failing 
strength 
warned him 
to retire. 


He died at 
Selinus, 
August 117. 


5° 


The Age of the Antonines. 


AD. 


frontier and chastise an insolent aggressor; and to the 
soldier’s eye, perhaps, there was a danger that, after a 
century of peace, the Roman empire might 

His character, gett j e on ^ J eeSj an( J j Qse j ts ener gy and 

self-respect. At home, in the routine of civil government 
he was wary and vigilant and self-restrained, rising as 
ruler and as judge above the suspicion of personal 
bias and caprice, promptly curbing the wrong-doer and 
checking the officious zeal of his own ministers. He was 
natural and unaffected in the gentle courtesies of com¬ 
mon life, cared little for the outer forms of rank, and was 
easy of access to the meanest of his people. 

Dion Cassius, who never fails to insist upon the darker 
side of every character which he describes, says that he 
was lascivious in feeling, and given to habits of hard 
drinking, but owns that he can find no record of any 
wrong or harm done by him in such moods. The re¬ 
fined Pliny paints for us a different picture of the social 
life in which he took a part. Coming fresh from the 
meetings of the privy council held for some days in the 
Emperor’s villa, he tells us how he spent 
p V1 " 3I * the time at court. The fare, it seems, was 
somewhat simple; there was no costly show of entertain¬ 
ments ; but public readings amused the guests, and lite¬ 
rary discussions followed with pleasant converse far into 
the night. 

Through the great monuments which were called after 
his name, Trajan stood to the fancy of the middle ages 
as a personal symbol of the force and 
workfofart grandeur of old Rome; but art and poetry 
erfuny d th P e OW * brought him forward also as the favourite 
imagination of type of heathen justice. A scene in the 

later ages. 

sculptures of his forum represented him as 
starting for the wars, while a woman was bending low 


97-117* 


Trajan. 


5* 


with piteous gesture at his feet. Out of this a legend 
grew that a poor widow came to him to ask for ven¬ 
geance on the soldiers who had killed her ^ , 

Taken a s a 

son. “When I come back I will listen to type of 
your suit,’’ the Emperor said. “And who tice^rT/egend 
will right me if you die?” was the reply. and art - 
“My successor.” “Your successor; yes, but his act 
will not profit you, and it were better surely to do the good 
yourself and to deserve the recompense that will follow.” 
Trajan’s heart, so ran the story, was touched by the 
widow’s earnest plea ; he waited patiently to hear her 
case, and would not leave till she had justice done her. 
Such is the form the legend takes in the 
poetry of Dante, and it is with this meaning Purg ' x- 
that the scene was pictured to the fancy in many a work 
of later art, such as that which we still may see at 
Venice in one of the capitals of the Doge’s palace. 

It was a favourite addition to the story that Gregory 
the Great was so moved with sympathy when it was told 
him that he prayed for the soul of the old pagan, who, 
having not the law, was yet a law unto himself. Thai 
very night he saw a vision in his sleep, and heard that, 
in answer to his prayer, the soul of Trajan had winged 
its flight to join the spirits of the blest. 


CHAPTER III. 

HADRIAN, A. D. 11 7— 1 38. 

From the story of the frank and earnest Trajan, we turn 
with a strange sense of contrast to the life and character 
of his successor, one of the most versatile The earlier 
and paradoxical of men. Of the career of Hadrian 
P. yElius Hadrianus, little is known tous for 



A.D. 


^ 2 The Age of the An to nines. 

the forty years before he gained the throne, and the 

meagre tale may be soon told. 

Born himself at Rome, he came of a family which 
drew its name from Hadria in Northern Italy, but had 
been settled for centuries in Spain. Losing his father at 
an early age, he came under the care of Trajan, his 
near kinsman, and after a few years, in which he made 
such rapid progress in his studies as to be called the 
little Greekling,” he took to hunting with such passion as 
to need a check, and was therefore put at once into the 
army, and taken by his guardian to the wars. The news 
of Nerva’s death found him in Upper Germany at a dis¬ 
tance from his kinsman, and he was the first to carry to 
him the tidings of his accession to the empire, outstrip¬ 
ping, though on foot, the courier sent by his sister’s hus¬ 
band Servianus, who had contrived to make his carriage 
break down upon the way. 

The same relative tried also to make mischief by call¬ 
ing Trajan’s notice to the debts and youthful follies of 
his ward; but Hadrian still had influence at court, and 
stood high in the good graces of Plotina, married by her 
help the Emperors grand-niece, and had a legion given 
him to command in the second Dacian war. In this, 
as afterwards in Pannonia and Parthia, his gallantry 
and powers of discipline were spoken of with marked 
approval; powerful friends began to rally round him 
at the court, and to think of him and act for him as a 
possible successor to the throne. But no decisive word 
was uttered to encourage friends or to alarm his rivals, 
TT . ,, and all up to the last were in suspense, till 
elevation to he heard suddenly in Syria, where Trajan 
caused ugly had left him in command, first, that the 
rumours. emperor had named him as his heir, and 
then a few days afterwards that the post of monarchy 


ii 7 -i38. 


Hadrian . 


53 


was vacant. So sudden was the act as to give rise to 
ugly rumours. Plotina, it was whispered, who loved 
him fondly if not wisely, had tampered for his sake with 
her dying husband’s will, had even kept his death a 
secret for a time, and written with her own hand the 
letters to the Senate which named Hadrian his heir. 
But in what we read elsewhere about Plotina she appears 
as a type of womanly dignity and honour, and the story 
serves best perhaps to illustrate the licence of court 
scandal which absolute monarchy so often fosters. 

The first acts of the new sovereign were temperate and 
wary. His letters to the Senate were full of filial respect 
for Trajan and regard for constitutional usage. He ex¬ 
cused himself because the soldiers in their haste had 
hailed him Emperor without waiting for their sanction, 
asked for divine honours for the departed ruler, whose 
remains he went to look upon with dutiful affection, and 
sent to be enshrined within the famous column in the 
forum. Declining the triumph for himself, he had Tra¬ 
jan’s likeness borne in state along the streets in the pa¬ 
geant that was to do honour to his exploits. But for all 
that, Hadrian was in no mood to follow in his steps, had 
no wish to copy his love of war or his impe¬ 
rial ambition. On every frontier hostile Hl * mode : 

J . ration and 

races were in arms; in far-off Britain as policy of 

pCclCC 

well as in the East, among the Moors of 
Africa and among the bold races of the north there were 
rumours of invasion or revolt. There was no lack of 
opportunities, nor, indeed, of armies trained to conquest; 
but he was not to be tempted with the hope of military 
laurels, and his constant policy was one of peace. He 
withdrew at once the weak pretender forced upon the 
Parthians by the arms of Rome, and left all the lands 
beyond the Tigris where no western colonists had any 


54 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


claims upon his care. It was far otherwise in Dacia, in 
which peaceful settlers had found a home for years, and 
strongholds had been garrisoned for their defence. It 
would seem therefore most unlikely that he thought of 
drawing back his troops from the strong mountain bar¬ 
rier of Transylvania, and of leaving the new province 
to its fate. Later writers, reflecting possibly the discon¬ 
tent of Trajan’s generals, said indeed that he was mind¬ 
ed to do this, and that he had actually begun to break 
the bridge across the Danube ; but the facts remain, 
that the language and the arts of Rome steadily gained 
ground upon that northern border, and that Hadrian 
surrendered nothing which was worth retaining. For 
the rest, in other parts of the great empire, he was con¬ 
tent to restore order, and waged no offensive warfare. 

Yet, strange to say, not only had he personal hardi¬ 
hood and valour, and was ready on the march to face 
the heat and labours of the day like the 
meanest soldier in the ranks, but he always 
with watchful care maintained his armies 
in a state of vigour and efficiency that sel¬ 
dom had been rivalled. He swept away 
with an unsparing hand the abuses of the 
past, and insisted on the austere discipline of ancient 
days, putting down with peremptory sternness the luxu¬ 
rious arrangements of the camp, which even in Germany 
endangered the soldier’s manliness and self-control, and 
still more in Syria, where the wanton Antioch, hot-bed 
of licence as it was, spread far around it the contagion 
of its dissolute and unruly temper. In the spirit of the 
generals of olden time he walked bareheaded alike 
through Alpine snows and in the scorching heats of 
Africa, setting them thus a pattern of robust endurance. 
In every land through which he passed he inspected 


was accom¬ 
panied by 
personal 
hardihood 
and strict 
regard for 
discipline. 


11 7~ 1 3&- 


Hadrian. 


55 


carefully the forts, encampments, arsenals, and stores, 
and seemed to have lodged in his capacious memory 
the story of each legion, and the names even of the rank 
and file. 

In the centre of Algeria we may still trace the ram¬ 
parts of a camp where an auxiliary force was stationed 
to defend the border and to be the pio¬ 
neers of civilized progress. On a column Themscnp- 

r ° tion in the 

which was raised in the centre of the camp camp in 

Limb^sis 

was posted in monumental characters a 
proclamation of the Emperor to the soldiers of this 
distant outpost, in which he dwells upon their laborious 
energy and loyal zeal. 

Thus trained and organized, his armies were formida¬ 
ble weapons for the hand of an enterprising leader; but 
he used them wholly for repression or defence, and 
never with aggressive aims. Even in Britain, where 
the peaceful south was harassed by the incursions of ihe 
wilder tribes, in place of any war of conquest a great 
wall, a triple line of earthworks strengthened by a high 
wall of solid masonry, was carried for many a mile 
across the country, to be a barrier to the northern sav¬ 
agery ; and fragments of the work may yet be seen 
between Newcastle and Carlisle to show how earnestly 
defence was sought by the ruler who built on such a 
scale. 

But it was no love of personal ease that clipped the 
wings of his ambition. Instead of staying quietly at 
Rome to take his pleasure, he was always on 
the move, and every province witnessed in constantly 
its turn the restless activitv of his imperial through the 

J 1 provinces. 

care. The coins struck in his honour as he 
went to and fro upon his journeys, the stately monu¬ 
ments and public works which were called into being by 


5 6 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


him as he passed along, these are evidence enough, 
when the meagre accounts of our historians fail to tell 
us, of the wide range of his long-continued wanderings 
and of the benefits which followed in his train. 

The empire had long claimed to govern in the inter¬ 
ests of the provinces, and not of Rome alone, and here 
at last was an Emperor who seemed resolved to see with 
his own eyes all his people’s wants, to spend with liberal 
bounty for the common good, to reform impartially the 
abuses of old times, and lay the heavy rod of his dis¬ 
pleasure upon all his weak or faithless servants. To the 
largeness of such aims there corresponded a breadth and 
manysidedness of character and powers; and few living 
men were better fitted to enter with fresh interest into 
the varied life of all the lands through which he tra¬ 
velled. Had he not been emperor he might have been 
a sort of “ admirable Crichton.” He had thrown him¬ 
self with eager curiosity into all the art and learning of 
his age, and his vast memory enabled him to take all 
knowledge for his own. Poet, geometer, 
musician, orator, and artist, he had studied 
all the graces and accomplishments of lib¬ 
eral culture, knew something of the history 
and genius of every people, could estimate 
their literary or artistic skill, and admire the achieve¬ 
ments of the past. 

But he was far from travelling merely as an antiqua¬ 
rian or art critic, for he left in every land enduring 
traces of his present care. The bridges, aqueducts, and 
theatres were repaired, fresh public works were under¬ 
taken, municipal accounts were overhauled, the gover¬ 
nors’ official acts reviewed, and every department of the 
public service thoroughly sifted and controlled. The 
imperial treasury was seen to gather in its stores in the 


showirg in 
all a breadth 
of view and 
largeness of 
sympathy 
almost unique 


117-138. 


Hadrian. 


57 


interest of the provinces at large, and not for a few dis¬ 
solute favourites at court or for the idle populace of 
Rome. To symbolize in striking forms his impartial 
care for all his subjects, he was ready to accept local 
offices of every kind, and discharge by deputy the 
magisterial functions in the district towns under every 
variety of national title. 

In the movements of the imperial tourist there was 
little luxury or ostentation. He walked or rode in mili¬ 
tary guise before his guard, with his head uncovered in 
all weather, ready to share without a murmur the legion¬ 
ary’s humble fare, and to bear all the heat and labour 
of the day. History gives us few details as to the exact 
course and order of his wanderings, but inscriptions 
upon bronze and stone abound with the tokens of his 
energy in every land, and of the thankfulness with 
which each province hailed the presence of its ruler. 

In Britain, which had seen no emperor since Claudius, 
he came to inspect the menaced frontier, and to plan the 
long lines of defence against the free races , 

. - . _ . . . . We hear of 

of the north. In Africa we find him sooth- him in 
ing the disquiet caused of late by the panic Bntain * 
fears of Jewish massacres and Roman vengeance. His 
diplomacy and liberal courtesies dispel the 
clouds of war that gather on the lines of the 
Euphrates and are serious enough to require his pre¬ 
sence on the scene. On the plains of Troy we hear of 
him gazing around him in the spirit of a pilgrim, and 
solemnly burying the gigantic relics in which his rever¬ 
ent fancy saw the bones of Ajax. The great towns of 
western Asia are proud to let their Emperor 
see their wealth, their industry, their teem¬ 
ing populations; they have to thank him for many a 
public monument of note, and record upon their coinage 


5» 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


in many a varying phrase and symbol his justice, liber¬ 
ality, and guardian care. 

But it was in Athens that he tarried longest, or hither 
he came most frequently to find repose as in his favourite 
home. Here in the centre of the old Hellenic art, he 
put off awhile the soldier and the prince, and soothed 
himself with the amenities of liberal culture. He tried 
to fancy himself back in the Greek life of 
AthiHs palmier days; he presided at the public 

more than games, sat by to witness the feats of literary 
skill, raised the theatres and temples from 
their ruins, and asked to be admitted to the venerable 
mysteries of their national faith. To the Athens of old 
days he added a new quarter, to be called 
KbenSly* henceforth Hadrian's city ; he gave it a new 
endowed art code of laws to rival those of Dracon and 

and learning, 

of Solon, and recalled some shadowy me¬ 
mories of its days of sovereign power by making it mis¬ 
tress of the isle of Kephallonia. It had already acade¬ 
mic fame, and drew its scholars from all lands; its 
public professorships had given a recognised status to 
its studies; fresh endowments were bestowed upon its 
chairs with a liberal hand, and nothing was spared for 
the encouragement of learning. 

The lecturers on rhetoric and philosophy, the so-called 
sophists, basked in the sunshine of imperial favour, had 
immunities and bounties showered upon 
them, and were raised at times to offices of 
state and high command. One of them was 
intrusted with a princely fortune to beautify 
the city which he honoured with his learned 
presence. Another found his professional income large 
enough to feed his fellow citizens in time of famine. A 
third, the writer Arrian, was taken from his Stoic mu- 


honouring 
there and 
elsewhere 
the pro¬ 
fessors of 
science. 


117-138. 


Hadrian . 


59 


sings to fill the place of general and governor of Cappa¬ 
docia, one of the largest of the provinces of Rome. 
There in his turn he followed the example set him in 
high quarters, started from Trapezus (Trebizond) upon 
a journey of discovery round the coasts of the Black 
Sea, visited the seats of the old colonial enterprises of 
Miletus, studied with a careful eye the extent of trade 
and the facilities for intercourse in prosperous regions 
not yet ruined by the incursions of barbarian hordes. 
The explorer’s journey ended, he wrote a valuable 
memoir to his master ; which is of interest as gather¬ 
ing up all that geography had learned upon the sub¬ 
ject. 

There was yet another ancient land which had mani¬ 
fold attractions for the tourist. It was seemingly in later 
life that Hadrian tarried long in Egypt, to 

explore the wonders of its art and study the Hadrian in 
. . J Egypt- 

genius of its people. He looked no doubt 

with curious eye upon the pyramids, the sphinxes, and 

the giant piles of Carnac, and the rude lines may still 

be read upon the face of Memnon’s vocal statue which 

tell us of the visit of his wife Sabina. His curious fancy 

found enough to stir it in the secrets of the mystic lore 

which had been handed down from bygone ages, in the 

strange medley of the wisdom and the folly which 

crossed each other in the national thought, in their strong 

hold on the belief in an unseen world and the moral 

government of Providence, ^n the animal worship which 

had plunged of late a whole neighbourhood into deadly 

feud about the conflicting claims of cat and ibis, and 

made rival towns dispute in arms their right to feed in 

their midst the sacred bull called Apis for the adoration 

of the rest. He could not but admire the great museum 

of the Ptolemies, the magnificent seat of art and litera- 



6 o 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A. D. 


ture and science, the home for centuries of so much 
academic wit and learning. 

In that land of many wonders the people of Alexandria 
were not the least. In a letter to his brother-in-law 
Hist A which still remains we may see the mocking 

Vopisci insight with which the emperor studied the ‘ 

changing moods of the great city, full, as it 
seemed to him, of soothsayers, astrologers, and quacks, 
of worshippers of Christ and votaries of Serapis, passing 
in their fickleness from extreme of loyalty to that of 
licence, so industrious by instinct as to tolerate no idle 
lounger in their midst, and yet withal so turbulent as to 
be incapable of governing themselves, professing rever¬ 
ence for many a rival deity, yet all alike paying their 
court to Mammon. 

But even as he scoffed at the fanciful extravagance of 
Egypt, he was unmanned by the spell of her distempered 
thought. As he travelled on the Nile, we read, he was 
busy with magic arts which called for a human victim. 
One of his train, a Bithynian shepherd of rare beauty, 
was ready to devote himself, and died to give 
a moment’s pleasure to his master. An¬ 
other story tells us only that he fell into the 
river, and died an involuntary death. But 
both agree in this at least, that Hadrian loved him 
fondly, mourned him deeply, and would not be com¬ 
forted when he was gone. He could not bring him 
back to life, but he could honour him as no sovereign 
had honoured man before. The district where he died 
must bear his name, and a city grow on the spot where 
he was buried. If the old nomes of Egypt had their 
tutelary beasts which they worshipped as divine, the 
Antinoite might claim like rank for the new hero who 
had given it a name, might build temples to his memory, 


The death 
and apo¬ 
theosis of 
Antinous. 


117-138. 


Hadrian . 


61 


consult his will in oracles, and task the arts of Greece to 
lodge him worthily. Soon the new religion spread be¬ 
yond those narrow bounds. City after city of the Greek 
and Eastern world caught the fever of this servile adora¬ 
tion, built altars and temples to Antinous, founded festi¬ 
vals to do him honour, and dressed him up to modern 
fancy in the attributes and likeness of their ancient gods. 
The sculptor’s art lent itself with little scruple to the 
spreading flattery of the fashion, reproduced him under 
countless forms as its favourite type of beauty, while 
poets laureate sung his praises, and provincial mints 
put his face and name upon their medals. 

We may see the tokens at this time of an influence 
rather cosmopolitan than Roman. By his visible con¬ 
cern for the well-being of the provinces, by 
his long-continued wanderings in every 
land, by his Hellenic sympathies and tastes, 

Hadrian lessened certainly the attractive 
force of the old imperial city, and dealt a 
blow at her ascendancy over men’s minds. Not indeed 
that he treated her with any marked neglect. The 
round of shows and largesses went on as usual: the 
public granaries were filled, the circus was supplied with 
costly victims, and the proud paupers of the streets had 
little cause to grumble. The old religions of home 
growth were guarded by the state with watchful care, 
and screened from the dangerous rivalry of the deeper 
sentiment or more exciting rituals of the East. In her 
streets he himself wore the toga, the citizen’s traditional 
dress of state, required the senators to do the like, and 
so revived for a time decaying custom. But the pro¬ 
vinces began to feel themselves more nearly on a level 
with the central city. Every year the doors of citizen¬ 
ship seemed to open wider as one after another of the 


Hadrian’s 
interests 
cosmo¬ 
politan 
more than 
Roman. 


The Age of the Antonines. a.d. 

towns was raised by special grace to the 
Latin or the Roman status. Each Emperor 
had done his part towards the diffusion of 
the rights which had been the privilege of 
the capital in olden time ; and Hadrian 
made them feel that he was ruling in the 
interests of all without distinction, since he 
spent his life in wandering through their midst, and met 
their wants with liberal and impartial hand. They 
looked therefore less and less to Rome to set the tone 
and guide the fashions. The great towns of Alexandria 
and Antioch, the thriving marts of Asia Minor, were 
separate centres of influence and commerce; and Greece, 
meanwhile, spectral and decayed as were her ancient 
cities, resumed her intellectual sway over men’s minds, 
students of all lands flocked to her university of culture, 
and the tongue which her poets, philosophers, and 
orators had spoken became henceforth without a rival 
the literary language of the world. The speech of Cicero 
and Vergil gradually lost its purity and power ; scholars 
disdained to pen their thoughts in it: taste and fashion 
seemed to shun it, and scarcely a great name is added 
after this to the roll of its writers of renown. 

In the sphere of law and justice another levelling in¬ 
fluence had been at work which was carried 
influ-nceof 8 further at this time. The civil law of Rome, 
with its traditional usages and forms, 
had long been seen by statesmen to need 
expansion in a liberal spirit before the courts could fairly 
deal with the suits of aliens, or with new cases wholly 
undefined. The praetors had for many years put out a 
statement of the principles by which they would be 
guided in dealing with the questions where the statute 
law would fail them or press hardly on the suitors, and 


62 


As the 
provinces 
gained in 
self-respect, 
the ascend¬ 
ancy of 
Rome and 
of her lan¬ 
guage grew 
feebler. 


117-138. 


Hadrian. 


6 3 


many of these rules and forms, though at first binding 
only for the year, had gradually crystallised into a sys¬ 
tem of equity, which passed commonly from hand to 
hand, though somewhat loose and ill-defined, and with 
much room for individual judgment and caprice. It was 
a gain to progress when Salvius Julianus, an eminent 
. jurist of the day, sifted and harmonized these floating 
principles and forms of justice, giving them a systematic 
shape under the name of Hadrian’s “perpetual edict^’ 
It was a great step towards the imperial codes of later 
days, in which the currents of world-wide experience 
and Greek philosophy were mingled with the stream of 
purely Roman thought. The Emperor was the sole 
legislator of the realm; the statutes w r ere the expression 
of his personal will; but the great jurists who advised 
him in the council chamber came from countries far 
away, and reflected in many various forms the universal 
sense of justice. 

So far we have seen only the strength of Hadrian’s 
character. To organize and drill the armies in a period 
of almost unbroken peace, and give a tone to discipline 
which lasted on long after he was gone, to study by per¬ 
sonal intercourse the problems of government in every 
land, dealing with all races on the same broad level of 
impartial justice, to combine the rigid machinery and 
iron force of Roman rule with the finer graces of Hel¬ 
lenic culture, this was a policy which, borrowed as it was 
perhaps from the old traditions of Augustus, yet could 
be carried out only by an intellect of most unusual flexi¬ 
bility and force. For the work which was to be done 
upon so vast a scale he had only limited resources ; he 
dealt with it in a spirit which was at once Hadrian’s fru- 
liberal and thrifty, thus following in the g^Vnance. 
steps of the wisest emperors who had gone 


A.D. 


64 The Age of the Antonines. 

before him. In the first year of his reign he had re¬ 
mitted the arrears due to the treasury to the amount of 
900 million sesterces, burning the bonds in Trajan s 
forum as a public offering to his memory. The chanties 
lately set on foot for the rearing of poor children were 
endowed by him with further bounties. We may still 
read the medals struck in honour of his largesses of 
money to the populace of Rome, repeated on seven-dis¬ 
tinct occasions. Prompt succour was given with a kindly 
hand to the sufferers by fire and plague and earthquake 
in all parts of the widespread empire. But to meet such 
calls upon his purse, and to maintain the armies and the 
civil service, he felt the need of frugal ways and good 
finance. He revised the imperial budget with the skill 
of a trained accountant, held the details in his reten¬ 
tive memory, and would have no waste or peculation. 
Economy was the order of his household; no greedy 
favourites or freedmen grew fat and wanton at the trea¬ 
sury’s expense; the purveyors of his table even found 
that they must be careful, for at his dinners of state he 
sent sometimes to taste the dishes which were served to 
the humblest of his guests. 

But great as were Hadrian’s talents, and consistent in 
the main as was his policy as ruler, we are yet told of 
many a pettiness and strange caprice. If we try to 
study his real character it seems, like the 
legendary Proteus, to take every form by 
turns, to pass from the brightest to the dark¬ 
est moods by some inexplicable fantasy. 
One of the first things we read of him on his 
rise to power is his speech to an old enemy, 
“ Now you are safe,’’ as if he could stoop no 
longer to the meanness of a personal quarrel. He will 
not listen to the advice of a trusty friend to sweep out 


But. 

Hadrian’s 
great quali¬ 
ties were 
said to be 
balanced by 
dark mooas 
and strange 
caprices. 


117-138. 


Hadrian. 


6 5 

of his path three men who might be dangerous rivals; 
but shortly afterwards Rome heard with horror that the 
most eminent of Irajan’s generals, Cornelius Palma, the 
conqueror of Arabia, and Lusius Quietus, perhaps the 
ablest soldier of his day, with other men of 
special mark, had been suddenly struck cious 
down unheard, without any forms of legal temper ’ 
trial, on the plea of traitorous plots against the Emperor’s 
life. Resenting probably as a personal affront the sur¬ 
render of the conquests which they had helped to win 
for Trajan, and despising the scholar prince whose great 
qualities were as yet unknown, they had made common 
cause, as it was said, with malcontents at Rome, and 
joined in a wide-spread conspiracy. Hadrian indeed 
was in Dacia at the time, and soon came back in haste, 
and with good reason, seemingly, threw upon the prae¬ 
torian praefect and the Senate the burden of the dark 
deed that had been done, promising that henceforth no 
senator should be condemned except by the sentence of 
his peers. He kept his word till his reason lost its bal¬ 
ance. But years afterwards the instinct of cruelty broke 
out in fearful earnest. When old age and sickness 
pressed him hard, and the reins of power were slipping 
from his hands, his fears of treachery proved fatal to his 
nearest intimates and kinsmen, to those who had se¬ 
cured his rise to empire, or had shown their loyalty by 
the service of a life-time. 

As we read the story in the poor chroniclers of a later 
age the description of his personal habits is full of 
striking inconsistencies. He lived with the citizens of 
Rome as with his peers, and moved to and fro with little 
state ; yet he was the first Emperor to employ the ser¬ 
vices of knights for the menial offices of the palace filled 
hitherto by freedmen. He would hear no more of the 


66 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


charges of high treason so terrible in years gone by, he 
would have the courts of law to act without respect of 
persons ; but he organized a system of espi- 
system of onage of a new and searching kind, and 

espionage, 0 # ° 9 

read the familiar correspondence of his 
friends, twitting them even, now and then, with the re¬ 
proaches of their wives meant only for the husbands’ 
ears. He loved art and literature sincerely, he liked to 
be surrounded with the men who studied them in ear¬ 
nest, but they thought at least that he took umbrage 
easily at any fancied rivalry, and was full of jealousy 
and unworthy spite. 

It was dangerous to be too brilliant where the Empe¬ 
ror wished to shine, and there were few departments of 
the fine arts in which he did not find himself 
ousyof at home. The scholar Favorinus once 

was asked why he had given way so easily 
in a dispute upon a point of grammar when 
he was in the right, and he answered with good reason, 
“ It is not a prudent thing to call in question the learning 
of the master of thirty legions.” The professors of re¬ 
pute who moved his envy found their pupils taken from 
. them, or rival lecturers started to irritate 

case of and supplant them. Apollodorus, the great 

Apollodorus. , . i i t 

architect, was even more unlucky. Long ago 
in Trajan’s company he had listened with impatience 
to the future Emperor’s critical remarks, and had told 
him to paint pumpkins and not to meddle with design. 
Years afterwards, when Hadrian sent him his own plans 
for the temple of Aphrodite which he wished to build, it 
was returned with the offensive comment that thq statue 
of the goddess was made upon so large a scale that she 
could not stand upright in her own house. The critic 
paid with his life, we read, the penalty for his sharp words. 


brilliant 

powers. 


117-138. 


Hadrian. 


67 


His fickleness, 


Even the glory of the immortal dead stirred the jeal¬ 
ousy of the artist prince, and he affected to prefer Cato 
to Cicero, Ennius to Vergil, the obscure Antimachus to 
Homer. He was said to be jealous of the fame of Trajan 
and therefore to attribute to his most secret counsels the 
most unpopular of his own measures ; by way of indi¬ 
rectly blaming him, he would not have his own name 
put upon any of the public buildings which he raised, 
while yet he was ready to allow some twenty cities to 
take their title from him. 

It was a marked feature of his policy to be on good 
terms with the chieftains of the border races, and 
to win their good-will with ample presents, 
a dangerous precedent perhaps for the tri¬ 
bute paid to barbarians by later rulers; but after receiv¬ 
ing one of them at Rome with special honour, he treated 
with contempt the robes of state presented to him by his 
illustrious guest, dressing up in like attire 300 criminals 
whom he«ent to fight as gladiators in the circus. 

He was courteous and kindly to his friends, granting 
them readily the boons they asked ; yet he listened with 
open ears to scandalous stories to their hurt, and few 
even of the most favoured escaped at last without dis¬ 
grace. Shrewd and hardheaded as he was, 
he believed in necromancy, magic, and as- su P erstltlon * 
trology, and after making much of keeping up the purity 
of the old national faith, he allowed the flattery of his 
people to canonize Antinous, the minion who won his 
love in later years. In fine, says one of the oldest writers 
of his life, after reckoning up his fickle moods and varied 
graces, “ he was everything by turns ; earnest and light¬ 
hearted, courteous and stern, bountiful and thrifty, 
frank and dissembling, wary and wanton ”—a very cha¬ 
meleon with changing colours. It seemed as if he 


68 


The Age of the Antonines. 


AD. 


and para- gathered up in his paradoxical and many- 

variety of sided nature all the fair qualities and gross 

temper. defects which singly characterised each of 

the earlier rulers. Yet we have grave reasons for mis¬ 
trusting the accounts which reach us from such question¬ 
able sources as the poor biographies and 

Reasons for . . , r 

mistrusting epitomes of a much later age, which otten 

of C anden° UntS betray a fatal want of judgment while they 

authors. reflect the credulous malevolence of rumour. 

Rome had no tender feeling for a ruler who seemed 
more at home in learned Athens, or in the camp among 
the soldiers, than in the old capital of fashion and of 
power. The idle nobles doubtless were well pleased to 
repeat and colour the ill-natured stories which floated in 
the air, and in the literary circles gathered round the 
prince there were sensitive and jealous spirits ready to 
resent a hasty word and think their merits unacknow¬ 
ledged, or to point a venomed epigram against the 
Emperor’s sorry taste. Hadrian was a master in the 
fence of words, and could hit hard in repartees, as when 
a tippling poet wrote of him in jesting strain, “I should 
not like to be a Caesar, roaming through the wilds of 
Britain, suffering from Scythian frosts,’’ he answered in 
the same metre, “ I should not like to be a Florus, wan¬ 
dering among the taverns and keeping pothouse com¬ 
pany.” He may well have shown impatience at petty 
vanities and literary quarrels, or have amused himself at 
their expense with scant regard for ruffled pride; but if 
we pass from words to facts few definite charges can be 
brought against his dignity or justice as a prince. An 
enlightened patron of the arts, he fostered learning with 
a liberal bounty, advanced to posts of trust the scholars 
whose talents he had noticed, and knew how to turn 
their powers to practical account, as when Salvius Julia- 


”7-138- 


Hadrian. 


69 

nus began, probably by his direction, to compile a code 
of equity, or when he prompted Arrian to compose his 
“ Tactics ” and explore the line of border forts upon the 
Euxine, or when he bade Apollodorus to write his treatise 
on artillery (Poliorketica), the opening words of which, 
though written in exile, betray no personal resentment 
as of one suffering from a wanton wrong. With that 
exception, if it really was one, there is no clear case of 
harshness or of cruelty to stain his memory until his 
reason failed in the frenzy of his dying agony. To set 
against such rumours and suspicions we have proofs 
enough, in monumental evidence and in the works which 
lived on after he was gone, of the greatness of the sov¬ 
ereign, who left abiding tokens of his energy strewn 
through all the lands of the vast empire, who kept his 
legions in good humour though busy with unceasing 
drill, who stamped his influence for centuries upon the 
forms of military service, drew vast lines of fortresses 
and walls round undefended frontiers, reorganized de¬ 
partments of the civil service, and withal found leisure 
enough and width of intellectual sympathies to appreci¬ 
ate and foster all the higher culture of the age. 

We may find perhaps a sort of symbol of his wide 
range of tastes in the arrangements of the villa and the 
gardens which he planned for himself in his 
old age at Tibur (Tivoli). No longer able xtvoii Uaat 
with his failing strength to roam over the 
world, he thought of gathering in his own surroundings 
a sort of pictorial history of the genius of each race and 
the national monuments of every land. Artists travelled 
at his bidding, and plied their tools, and reproduced in 
marble and in bronze the memories of a lifetime and the 
works of all the ages. A great museum was laid out under 
the open sky, bounded by a ring fence of some ten miles 


70 


The Age of the Antonines. 


a . d . 


in circuit; within it the old historic names were heard 
again, but in strange fellowship, as the most diverse 
periods of art and thought joined hands as it were to 
suit the Emperor’s fancy. The parks and avenues were 
peopled with statues which seemed to have just left the 
hands of Phidias or Polycletus or many an artist of 
renown. 

There was the Academy linked in memory for ever to . 
the name of Plato : there the Lyceum where his scholar 
and his rival lectured, and the Porch which gave its 
name to the doctors of the Stoic creed, and the Prytane- 
um or Guildhall, the centre of the civic life of Athens. 
Not far away were imaged forth in mimic forms the cool 
retreats of Tempe, while the waters of a neighbouring 
valley bore the votaries along to what seemed the tem¬ 
ple of Serapis at Canopus. Not content with the solid 
realities of earth, he found room also for the shadowy 
forms of the unseen world. The scenes of Hades were 
pourtrayed as borrowed from the poet’s fancy, or as 
represented in dramatic shapes in the Eleusinian mys¬ 
teries. In the settings of these pictures a large eclectic 
taste gave itself free liberty of choice. The arts of Greece, 
of Egypt, and of Asia yielded up their stores at the bid¬ 
ding of a connoisseur who saw an interest or a beauty in 
them all. 

The famous gardens are now a wilderness of ruins, 
full of weird suggestions of the past, over which a teem¬ 
ing nature has flung her luxuriant festoons to deck the 
fairy land of fancy; but they have served for centuries 
as a mine which the curious might explore, and the art 
galleries of Europe owe many of their bronzes, marbles, 
and mosaics to the industry and skill once summoned 
to adorn Hadrian’s panorama of the history of civilized 
progress. Among these the various statues of Antinous 


H 7 -I 3 8 - 


Hadrian. 


7 i 


Struck by 
disease he 
chose, for 
hissucces¬ 
sor, Verus, 
A. D. 135. 


are of most interest, partly as they show the methods of 
ideal treatment then in vogue, and the amount of crea¬ 
tive power which still remained, but partly also as the 
symptoms of the infatuation of a prince who could find 
no worthier subjects for the artists of his day than the 
sensuous beauty of a Bithynian shepherd. 

At this time indeed his finest faculties of mind were 
failing, and his death was drawing nigh. He was seized 
by a painful and hopeless malady, and it 
was time to think of choosing his succes¬ 
sor. But at first he could not bear the 
thought of anyone preparing to step into 
his place, and his jealousy was fatal to the 
men who were pointed out by natural claims or by the 
people’s favour. After a time he singled out a certain 
CElius Verus, who had showy accomplishments, a 
graceful carriage, and an air of culture and refinement. 
But he was thought to be a sensual, selfish trifler, with 
liftle trace of the manly hardihood of Hadrian in his 
best days; and few eyes, save the Emperor’s, could see 
his merits. The world was spared the chances of a pos¬ 
sible Nero in the future; the Emperor himself soon 
found, to use his own words, “that he was leaning on a 
tottering wall,” and that the great sums spent in dona¬ 
tives to the soldiers upon the adoption of the new-made 
Caesar were a pure loss to his treasury. The , , 

, who died 

young man’s health was failing rapidly; he soon after, 

had not even strength to make his compli¬ 
mentary speech before the Senate, and the dose which 
he took to stimulate his nerves was too potent for his 
feeble system, and hurried the weakling to the grave 
before he had time to mount the throne. 

Once more the old embarrassment of choice recurred, 
but this time with a happier issue. By a lucky accident 


72 


The Age of the Antoni ties. 


A. D. 


one day, we read, the Emperor’s eye fell on 
and T. A. Titus Aurelius Antoninus as he came into 

Antoninus 

was adopted the senate house supporting the weakness 
in his place. j^ s a g ec j father-in-law with his strong arm. 

He had passed with unstained honour through the round 
of the offices of state, had taken rank in the council 
chamber of the prince, where his voice was always raised 
in the interest of mercy. All knew his worth, and gladly 
hailed the choice when the Emperor’s mantle fell upon 
his shoulders ; the formal act of adoption once com¬ 
pleted, they could wait now with lighter hearts till the 
last scenes of Hadrian’s life were over. 

The Prince’s sun was setting fast in lurid cloud. 
Disease was tightening its hold upon him, and bringing 

Hadrian’ ^ a ^ n S er ^ n S agony of torment, in 

dying which his strong reason wholly lost its bal- 

fiffui y moods ance, and gave way to the fitful moods of a 
of cruelty. delirious frenzy. Now he was a prey to 
wild suspicions, and was haunted by a mania for blood¬ 
shed ; now he tried to obtain relief by magic arts and 
incantations ; and at last in his supreme despair he re¬ 
solved to die. But his physician would not give him the 
fatal potion which he called for ; his servants shrank in 
terror from the thought of dealing the blow which would 
rid him of his pains, and stole out of his grasp the dag¬ 
ger which he tried to use. In vain he begged them to 
cut short his sufferings in mercy. The filial piety of 
Antoninus watched over his bedside and stayed his 
hand when it was raised to strike himself, as he had al¬ 
ready hid from his sight the objects of his murderous 
suspicions. But the memory of Servianus, whom he 
had slain but lately, haunted in nightmare shapes the 
conscience of the stricken sufferer with the words which 
the victim uttered at the last:—“ I am to die though in- 


117-138. 


Hadrian. 


73 


nocent; may the gods give to Hadrian the wish to die, 
without the power.” He had also lucid intervals when 
his thoughts were busy upon the world unknown beyond 
the grave, and the scenes that were pictured for him in 
the gardens of his favoured home of Tivoli. Even on 
his deathbed he could feel the poet’s love for tuneful 
phrase, and the verses are still left to us which were ad¬ 
dressed by him to his soul, which, pale and cold and 
naked, would soon have to make its way to regions all 
unknown, with none of its whilom gaiety :— 


Animula, vagula, blandula, 
Hospes comesque corporis, 
Quae nunc abibis in loca, 
Pallidula, rigida, nudula, 
Nec ut soles dabis jocos. 


The end came at last at Baiae. The body was not 

brought in state to Rome, for the capital had long been 

weary of its ruler. It forgot the justice of 

his earlier years and the breadth of his im- His death 
J at Baiae, 

perial aims, and could not shake off the 
sense of terror of his moribund cruelty and frenzy. The 
senators were minded even to proscribe his memory and 
annul his acts, and to refuse him the divine honours 
which had been given with such an easy grace to men 
of far less worth. They yielded with reluctance to the 
prayers of Antoninus, and dropped an official veil over 
the memories of the last few months, influ¬ 
enced partly by their joy at finding that the ^dca n °m- 
victims whom they had mourned were living 
still, but far more out of respect for the present Emperor 
than the past. Was it popular caprice or a higher tone 
of public feeling, owing to which, Rome, which had 
borne with Caligula and regretted Nero, could not par- 


74 


r T', 


he Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


don the last morbid excesses of a ruler who for one-and* 
twenty years had given the world the blessings of secu¬ 
rity and justice ? 

Though Hadrian cared little for state parade in life, 
he wished to be lodged royally in death. The mauso¬ 
leum of Augustus was already full; he re- 

The mauso- ... 

leumof solved therefore to build a worthy resting- 

place for himself and for the Caesars yet to 
come. A stately bridge across the Tiber, in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of the Campus Martius, decked with a row of 
statues on each side, was made to serve as a road of 
state to lead to the great tower in which his ashes were 
to lie. Above the tower stood out to view the groups of 
statuary whose beauty moved the wonder of the travel¬ 
lers of later days; within was a sepulchral cham¬ 
ber, in a niche of which was stored the urn which 
contained all that the flames had left of Hadrian. The 
tower was built of masonry almost as solid as the giant 
piles of Egypt, and with the bridge it has outlived the 
wreck of ages. For almost a century it served only to 
enshrine the dust of Emperors, but afterwards it was 
used for other ends, and became a fortress, a papal resi¬ 
dence, a prison. When the Goths were storming Rome, 
the tide of war rolled up against the mausoleum, and 
when all else failed the statues which adorned it were 
torn from their pedestals by the besieged, and flung 
down upon their enemies below. Some few were found, 
long centuries after, almost unhurt among the ruins, and 
may be still seen in the great galleries of Europe. The 
works of art have disappeared with the gates of bronze 
and with the lining of rich marble which covered it with¬ 
in, and after ages have done little to it save to replace 
the triumphal statue of the builder with the figure of the 
Archangel Michael, whom a Pope saw in his vision 


117-138. 


Hadrian. 


75 


sheathing his sword in token that the plague was stayed 
above the old tower that has since been called the castle 
of St. Angelo. 

The policy of Hadrian was one of peace ; through all 
his wide dominions a generation had grown 
up which scarcely knew the crash of war. break'in 
One race only, the Jewish, would not rest, Palestine, 

a. D. 132. 

but rose again in fierce revolt. The hopes 
of the nation had seemingly been crushed forever by the 
harsh hand of Titus ; the generals of Trajan piti¬ 
lessly stifled its vindictive passion that had burst out 
afresh in Africa and Cyprus. It had seen in Palestine the 
iron force of Roman discipline, and the outcasts in every 
land had learned how enormous was the empire and how 
irresistible its powei. Yet, strange to say, they flung 
themselves once more in blind fury on their masters, and 
refused to despair or to submit. They could not bear to 
think that colonists were planted among the ruins of 
their Holy City ; that heathen temples should be built in 
spots so full to them of sacred memories, or that the old 
sound of Jerusalem should be displaced in favour of the 
motley combination of ./Elia Capitolina, to which both 
the Emperor and the chief god of Rome lent each their 
quota. They nursed their wrath till Hadrian’s back was 
turned, and the bulk of the legions far away ; then at 
last the fire blazed out again, and wrapped all Palestine 
in flames. A would-be-Messiah showed himself among 
them, taking the title of Barchochebas, after the star 
whose rising they had waited for so long. The multitudes 
flocked eagerly around his banner, and Akiba, the great 
rabbi, lent him the sanction of his venerated name. 
The patriot armies needed weapons, but the Jewish 
smiths had bungled purposely in working for the Roman 
soldiers, that the cast-off arms might be left upon their 


A.D. 


7 6 The Age of the Antonines . 

hands. The dismantled fortresses were speedily rebuilt, 
the walls which Titus ruined rose afresh, and secret pass¬ 
ages and galleries were constructed under the strong¬ 
holds that the garrisons might find ingress and egress as 
they pleased. They would not meet the legions in the 
field, but tried to distract their energy by multitudinous 
warfare. The revolt, despised at first, soon grew to such 
• a height as to call for the best general of the empire and 
all the discipline of her armies. Julius Sev- 
terribly ' erus was brought from distant Britain to 
stamped out. driye the f anat ics to bay and to crush them 

with his overwhelming forces. One stronghold after 
another fell, though stubbornly defended, till the fiercest 
of the zealots intrenched themselves in their despair at 
Bether, and yielded only to the last extremities of 
famine. The war was closed after untold misery and 
bloodshed, and even the official bulletins avowed in their 
ominous change of style how great was the loss of 
Roman life. 

All that had been left of the Holy City of the Jews 
was swept away, and local memories were quite effaced. 
New settlers took the place of the old people; statues of 
the Emperor marked the site where the old Temple 
stood; and the spots dear to Christian pilgrims were be¬ 
fouled and hid away from sight by a building raised in 
honour of mere carnal passion. The Jews might never 
wander more in the old city of their fathers. Once only 
in the year were they allowed, on the anniversary of the 
destruction of their temple, to stand awhile within the 
holy precincts and kiss a fragment of the venerable ruin, 
and mourn over the hopeless desolation of their land. 
Even this privilege, says Jerome, they dearly bought, 
for a price was set by their masters on their tears, as 
they had set their price of old upon the blood of Jesus. 


138-161. 


Antoninus Pius . 


77 


CHAPTER IV. 

ANTONINUS PIUS. A. D. 138-161. 

The ancient writer who tells us most of Antoninus twice 
compares him with the legendary Numa whose reign 
appears in the romance of early Roman his¬ 
tory as the golden age of peace and equity, Jhereign of 
when men lived nearest in communion with w^s un¬ 
heaven. As in that dreamland of olden 
fancy the outlines are all faint and indistinct from want 
of stirring adventure or excitement, so now it might 
seem as if the happiness of the world were too com¬ 
plete to let it care either to make history or to write it. 
For the new sovereign was no Trajan , happiest when on 
the march and proud of his prowess in the field; he 
was not brilliant and versatile like Hadrian, bent on ex¬ 
ploring every land in person and exhausting all the 
experience of his age. His life as Emperor was passion¬ 
less and uneventful, and history, wearied of unbroken 
eulogy, has soon dropped her curtain upon the govern¬ 
ment of a prince who shunned parade and high ambi¬ 
tion, and was content to secure the welfare of his people. 
To describe him, the popular fancy chose 
the name of Pius, as Vergil called the hero Why called 
of his epic, though not perhaps with the 
same shade of meaning. The Romans meant by piety 
the scrupulous conscience and the loving heart which 
are careless of no claims upon them, and leave no task 
of duty unfulfilled. They used it for the reverence for 
the unseen world and the mystic fervour of devotion ; 
but oftener far for the quiet unobtrusive virtues of bro- 


78 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


ther, child, or friend. In the case of Antoninus other 
reasons were not wanting to justify the title, but above 
all, it seemed a fitting name for the tenderness with 
which he watched over Hadrian’s bed of sickness, refu¬ 
sing to let him cut short his pains and his despair, or 
stain his memory with the blood of guiltless victims; 
and when death came at last to the sufferer’s relief, he 
would not rest till he wrung from the unwilling Senate 
the vote which raised the departed Emperor to the rank 
of godhead. But he had spent the same loving care, it 
seems, already on many of his kinsmen, had given 
loans on easy terms to friends and neighbours, and 
showed to all a gentle courtesy which never failed. A 
character so kindly could not look with un- 
His chanty concern upon the endowments for poor 

was tender, r _ r 

children which Trajan’s charity had found¬ 
ed. He enlarged their number, and called the girls 
whom he reared at his expense, after the name of his 
own wife, Faustina. 

But there was no weakness, no extravagance in this 
good nature. His household servants, the officials of 
the court, who had counted perhaps on his indulgence, 
found to their surprise that his favour was no royal road 
to wealth. There was no golden harvest to be reaped 
from fees and perquisites and bribes in the service of a 
master who had a word and ear for all who came to 
see him, but made no special favourites, and had a per¬ 
fect horror of rich sinecures as a cruel tax upon the en¬ 
durance of his people. Nor did he, like 
yet free from earlier monarchs, use his patronage to win 
the loyalty of more adherents. The offices 
of state in the old days of the republic had passed rapidly 
from hand to hand, to satisfy the ambition of the ruling- 
classes; the first Emperors gave the consulship for a few 


138-161. 


Antoninus Pius. 


79 


months only to please men’s vanity with the unsubstan¬ 
tial honour, and rarely kept provincial governors long at 
the same post. But Antoninus had no love of change ; 
he retained in office the ministers whom Hadrian had 
named, and seldom displaced the men who had proved 
their capacity to rule. In this he had chiefly the public 
interest in view, for he called his agents sharply to ac¬ 
count if they were grasping or oppressive ; he tried to 
lighten the burden of taxation, and would not even 
travel abroad for fear that the calls of hospi¬ 
tality towards his train might be burden- ^avd d n0t 
some to the lands through which it passed. abroad > bat 
Yet though the provincials never saw him of provincial 
in their midst, they felt the tokens of his 
watchful care. He was ready to grant an audience to 
every deputation ; his ear was open to all the cries for 
succour or redress; he seemed quite familiar with the 
ways and means of all the country towns, and with the 
chief expenses which they had to meet. Had any grave 
disaster from fire or earthquake scourged their neighbour¬ 
hood, the Emperor was prompt with words of condolence 
and acts of grace. He was not ostentatious in his boun¬ 
ty, for he knew that to give freely to the favoured he 
must take largely from the rest; and in the imperial 
budget of those times there was no wide margin for his 
personal pleasures. In earlier days, indeed, he had 
readily received the family estates bequeathed to him by 
the kinsmen who had prized his dutiful 
affection, but now he would take no legacy ^ a ^ cono * 
save from the childless, and discouraged the 
morbid whim of those who used his name to gratify 
some spleen against their natural heirs. The eagerness 
of fiscal agents and informers died away, and the dreaded 
name of treason was seldom, if ever, heard. 


8o 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A. D. 


though 
wars were 
needful. 


Moorish 
and Dacian 
war pro¬ 
bably 
a.d. 139. 

War with 
Brigantes, 
A.d. 140-145 


It is natural to read that far and wide the provinces 
were prosperous and contented with a prince who ruled 
them quietly and firmly, who had no hank¬ 
ering after military laurels, but liked to say 
with Scipio that he would rather save a sin¬ 
gle fellow-countryman than slay a thousand of the enemy. 
Yet his reign was not one of unbroken peace, like that of 
fabled Numa. The Moors and the Britons 
and the untamed races of the Rhine and 
Danube tasked the skill and patience of his 
generals, and the Jews even, hopelessly 
crushed as they had seemed to be, flung 
themselves once more with ineffectual fury 
on the legions. But in the main the influ¬ 
ence of Rome was spread by wise diplomacy rather than 
with the sword. The neighbouring potentates saw 
Hadrian’s machinery of war standing in 
strong and burnished trim upon their bor¬ 
ders, and had no mind to try its force, while 
the gentle courtesies of Antoninus came with a better 
grace from one who could wield, if need be, such thun¬ 
derbolts of battle. So kings and chieftains sought his 
friendship. Some came to Rome from the far East to do 
him honour. Others at a word or sign stopped short in 
the career of their ambition, appealed to him to be um¬ 
pire in their quarrels, or renounced the aims which 
threatened to cross his will. For in the interests of the 
empire he would not part with the reality of power, 
though he cared little for the show of glory ; he grasped 
the substance, but despised the shadow. 

This is well nigh all we read about the ruler. It is 
time to turn to the pictures of the man, in the quiet of the 
home circle and in the simplicity of rural life. His 
family on the father’s side had long resided at Nemausus 


He gained 
more by 
diplomacy 


138-161. 


Antoninus Pius . 


81 


(Nismes), in the Romanised Provincia (Provence), but 
he chose for his favourite resort in time of leisure his 
country seat at Lorium in Etruria. There TT . , 

His homely 

he had passed the happy years of child- life at 
hood; and though often called away to the 
dignities of office in which father and ancestors had gone 
before him, he had gladly returned thither as often as he 
could lay aside his cares. There, too, as Emperor, he 
retired from the business and bustle of the city, put off 
awhile the purple robe of state, and dressed himself in 
the simple homespun of his native village. In that re¬ 
treat no tedious ceremonies disturbed his peace, no 
weariness of early greetings, no long debates in privy 
council or in judgment hall; but in their stead were the 
homely interest of the farm and vintage, varied only by 
a rustic merry-making or the pleasures of the chase. It 
was such a life as Curius or Cato lived of old, before the 
country was deserted for the towns, or slave-labour on 
the large estates took the place of native yeomen, though 
the rude austerity of ancient manners was tempered by 
a genial refinement which was no natural growth upon 
the soil of Italy. In the memoirs of his adopted son, 
who was one day to succeed him, we find a pleasant 
picture of the surroundings of the prince, of the easy 
tone and unaffected gaiety of the intercourse in his home 
circle, where all the etiquette of courts was laid aside, 
and every neighbour found a hearty welcome. 

The Emperor stood little on his dignity, and could 
waive easily enough the claims of rank, could take in 
good part a friendly jest, or even at times a 
rude retort. In the house of an acquaint- temper, Sy 

ance he was one day looking at some por¬ 
phyry columns which he fancied, and asking where his 
host had bought them, but was unceremoniously told 


82 


A.D. 


The Age of the Antonines. 

that under a friend’s roof a guest should know how to be 
both deaf and dumb in season. Such airs disturbed him 
little, at times served only to amuse him, as when Apol¬ 
lonius came from Colchis to teach philosophy to the 
young Marcus at the invitation of the prince, but de¬ 
clined to call upon him when he came to Rome, saying 
that the pupil should wait upon the master, not the mas¬ 
ter on the pupil. Antoninus only laughed at his preten¬ 
tiousness, and said that it was easier seemingly to come 
all the way from Colchis than to walk across the street 
at Rome. Long before, when he was governor of Asia, 
and had visited Smyrna in the course of a judicial cir¬ 
cuit, he was quartered by the magistrates in 
^ C ave re a adlly the mansion of the sophist Polemon, who 
sllght ' was away upon a journey at the time. At 

the dead of night the master of the house came home, 
and knocked with impatience at the doors, and would 
not be pacified till he had the place entirely to himself, 
and had closed the doors upon his unbidden guest. The 
great man took the insult quietly enough, and when, 
years afterwards, the sophist came to Rome to show off 
his powers of eloquence, the Emperor welcomed him to 
court without any show of rancour at the past, only tell¬ 
ing his own servants to be careful not to turn the door 
upon him when he called. And when an actor came 
with a complaint that Polemon, as stage director, had 
dismissed him without warning from a company of play¬ 
ers, he'only asked what time it was when he was so 
abruptly turned away. “ Midday!’’ was the complain¬ 
ant’s answer. “He thrust me out at midnight!” said 
the prince, “and I lodged no appeal!” 

It was the charm and merit of his character that he 
was so natural in all he said and did, and disliked con¬ 
ventional and affected manners. His young heir was 


138-161. 


Antoninus Pius, 


83 


warm and tender-hearted, and would not be comforted 
when he had lost his tutor. The servants of the court, 
quite shocked at what seemed an outburst 
of such vulgar grief, urged him to consult 2re‘o”h" 
his dignity and curb his feelings, but the ado P tedso “, 
Emperor silenced them and said: “ Let the tears flow ; 
neither philosophy nor rank need stifle the affections of 
the heart. Happily, he was himself rewarded by the 
tenderness which he respected in its love for others. He 
had adopted his nephew long ago by Hadrian’s wish, 
had married him to his own daughter, and watched his 
career with anxious care. The character thus formed 
under his eye was dutiful and loyal to the last. For 
many a year the young man was near him always, night 
and day storing in his memory lessons of statecraft and 
experience, taking in his pliant temper the impression of 
the stronger will, and preparing to receive the burdens 
of state upon his shoulder when the old man was forced 
to lay them down. 

At length the time was come, and Antoninus felt that 
the end was near. He had only strength to 
say a few last words, to commend the em- lefr^Tlmpire 
pire and his daughter to the care of his at his death, 
successor, to bid his servants move into the 
chamber of his son the golden statuette of Fortune which 
had stood always near his bed, and to give the watch¬ 
word for the last time to the officer on guard, before he 
passed away after three-and-twenty years of rule. The 
word he chose was “Equanimity,’ and it may serve as 
a fitting symbol for the calm and balanced temper, which 
was gentle yet firm, and homely yet with perfect dignity. 
History has dealt kindly with the good old man, for it 
has let his faults fall quite into the shade, till they have 
passed away from memory, and we know him only as 


84 The Age of the Antonines . A.D. 

the unselfish ruler, who was rich at his accession, but 
told his wife that when he took the empire he must give 
up all besides, who preferred to repair the monuments of 
others rather than to build new ones of his own, and, 
prince as he was, recurred fondly in his medals to the 
memories of the old republic. No great deeds are told 
of him, save this perhaps the greatest, that he secured 
the love and happiness of those he ruled. 


CHAPTER V. 

MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS. A.D. 147-180. 

Q 

Plato had written long ago that there could be no per¬ 
fect government on earth till philosophy was seated on 
the throne. The fancy was to be realised at 
The early life ] ast j n person of the second of the Anto- 
nines, for the whole civilized world was in 
the hands of one who in the search for truth had sat at 
the feet of all the sages of his day, and left no source of 
ancient wisdom unexplored. M. Annius Verus, for such 
was the name he bore at first, came of a family which 
had long been settled in the south of Spain, and thence 
summoned to the capital to fill the highest offices of 
state. Left fatherless in infancy, he had been tenderly 
cared for by his grandfather, and early caught the fancy 
of the Emperor Hadrian, who, because of the frank 
candour of his childish ways called him playfully Veris- 
simus, a name which he liked well enough in later years 
to have it put even at times upon the coins struck in his 
mints. At the early age of eight he was promoted to a 
place among the Salii, the priests of Mars, recruited com¬ 
monly from the oldest of the patrician families at Rome. 



r 4 7 -:1 80 . Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


85 


With them he learned to make the stated round in pub¬ 
lic through the city with the shields which fell of yore 
from heaven, to join in the old dances and the venerable 
litany, to which, among much that had almost lost its 
meaning to their ears, new lines were added now and 
then, in honour of the rulers lately deified. When they 
flung their flowers together on the statue of the god, his 
was the only garland which lighted on the sacred head, 
and young as he was he took the lead of all the rest, 
and knew by heart all the hymns to be recited. He 
grew apace in the sunshine of court favour, and no pains 
were spared at home meantime to fit him for high sta¬ 
tion, for the greatest of the teachers of his day took part 
in his instruction. 

Of these Fronto was one of the most famous. By a 
lucky accident, not many years ago, the letters which 
passed between him and his young pupil 

r ' A His corres- 

were found in an old manuscript, over the pondence 

fading characters of which another work had his old tutor, 
been written at a later date, in accordance 
with a custom which has saved for us many a pious 
homily at the expense of classic lore. There is much of 
pedantry and affectation in the style, and professor of 
rhetoric as Fronto was, he could not teach his young 
charge how to write with dignity or grace. Yet if we 
look below the poor conceits of form and stilted diction, 
we shall find the gush of warm affections welling up to 
give beauty to the boyish letters. There is a genuine 
ring about the endearing epithets which he lavishes 
upon his teacher, and a trustfulness with which he counts 
upon his sympathy in all his passing interests. He 
writes to him of course about his studies, how he is learn¬ 
ing Greek and hopes one day to rival the most eloquent 
Hellenic authors, how he is so hard at work as to have 


36 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


made extracts in the course of a few days from sixty 
books at least, but playfully relieves his fears by telling 
him that some of the books were very short. And then 
among passages of pretentious criticism, which make us 
fear that he is growing a conceited book-worm, come 
others of a lighter vein, which show that he has not lost 
his natural love of youthful pranks. One day he writes 
in glee to say how he frightened some shepherds on the 
road where he was riding, who took him and his friends 
for highway robbers, for, seeing how suspiciously they 
eyed him, he charged at full speed upon the flock, and 
only scampered off again when they stood on their de¬ 
fence and began to bandy blows with crook and staff. 

But happily the lad had other masters who 
s ion from er " taught him something better than the quib- 
philosophy ^ es and subtleties of rhetoric. Philosophy 
found him an apt pupil at a tender age, and 
he soon caught up with eagerness, and pushed even to 
excess, the lessons of hardihood and self-control. He 
tried to put his principles to the test of practice, to live 
simply in the midst of luxury and licence, to content him¬ 
self with frugal fare, and to take the bare ground for his 
bed at night. At last it needed all his mother’s gentle 
influence to curb the enthusiasm of his ascetic humour. 

The old professor whom he loved so well began to be 
jealous of such rival influence, and begged him not to 
forsake the Muses for austerer guides, who cared little 
for the graces of fine language, but seemed to think it 
vain and worldly to dress well or write a decent style. Tt 
was indeed no petty jealousy of a narrow heart, for the 
old man thought sincerely that rhetoric was the queen of 
all the sciences and arts, and longed to see 
of Fronto? Usy her seated on the throne. He wished to 
see his pupil famous, and could think of no 


I47~i8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


87 


opportunities so good as the one which imperial elo¬ 
quence would have before it. To lecture his subjects on 
the duty of man, to award the meed of praise or blame, 
to animate to high endeavours in well turned periods and 
graceful phrase—herein, he thought, lay the greatness of 
the ruler’s work, not in policy or law-making, or the 
rough game of war. The interests of humanity therefore 
were at stake, not personal ambition only, or the credit 
of his favourite study. He writes to say that he had 
already passed many a sleepless night, in which he was 
haunted by the fear that he had culpably neglected to 
stimulate the progress of his pupil. He had not guarded 
carefully the purity of his growing taste, had let him turn 
to questionable models; but henceforth they should study 
the grand style together, eschew comedies and such 
meaner moods of thought and language, and drink 
only at the sources which were undefiled. 

But the earnest scholar had outgrown his master, and 
even then was full of serious thoughts about great ques¬ 
tions, of “the misgivings of a creature moving about in 
worlds not realised,” and was not to be moved to give 
them up for canons of taste and rules of Medit< 1 7 
prosody. He gave in after years the Stoic 
Rusticus the credit of his conversion fiom letters to 
philosophy. “ It was he who made me feel how much I 
needed to reform and train my character. He warned me 
from the treacherous paths of sophistry, trom formal 
speeches of parade which aim at nothing higher than 
applause. Thanks to him I am weaned from rhetoric 
and poetry, from affected elegance of style, and can wiite 
now with simplicity. From him I have learned to con¬ 
centrate my thoughts on serious study, and not to be 
surprised into agreeing with all the random utteiance of 

fluent speech.” 


88 


The Age of the Antonines. 


a.d. 


Other influences came in meantime to tempt his 
thoughts from graver themes. Honours and dignities 
pursued him more as he grew careless of 
Offices of state their c j iarms> Already at fifteen years of 

age he was made prefect of the city, or first magistrate 
of Rome, when the consuls were away to keep the Latin 
holidays; he was betrothed also to the daughter of JE lius 
Verus, who stood nearest to the imperial succession, and 
on his death two years later he was, at the express wish 
of Hadrian, adopted himself byAntoninus, who was raised 
into the vacant place, and was soon to be left in undis¬ 
puted power. In accordance with the Roman practice, 
the young man called himself after the Aurelian family 
into which he passed, and may be spoken of hencefor¬ 
ward as Marcus Aurelius, the name by which history 
knows him best. It was a brilliant prospect that opened 
now before his eyes. Titles of rank and offices of state 
followed fast upon each other; all the priestly colleges 
were glad to welcome him among their members; in¬ 
scriptions in his honour which have been found even in 
far-off Dacia show that the eyes of men were 
favour° Pular turned on th e young Caesar, who already 
bore his part of the burdens of the empire. 
They soon learned, it seems, to love him, and to hope 
fondly of his youthful promise. The popular fancy mul- 
tiplied his portraits, and an eye-witness 

did not turn . . J 

the head of speaks of the rude daubs and ill-carved 
prince an& statuettes which were everywhere exposed 
for sale, and which, in the shops and public 
taverns and over the tables of the money-changers, 
showed the well-known features of the universal fa¬ 
vourite. 

But happily the incense of such flattery did not turn 
his head or cloud his judgment. Rather it seemed to 


147-180. Marcus Aurelius Anlo/iinus. 


89 


who looked 
to the Stoic 
creed for 
guidance, 


make him feel more deeply the responsibilities of high 
estate, and to make him the more resolved to fill it wor¬ 
thily. The sirens of the court had tried on him the 
witchery of their wanton charms, and the home life of 
Hadrian, which he shared awhile, had brought him into 
somewhat questionable circles; but his mother watched 
him with her constant care, and screened the purity of 
his growing manhood—a tender service for which he 
fondly thanks her memory in later years. Attracted by 
the high professions of the Stoic creed, he sought the 
secret of a noble life from the great doctors of the Porch, 
trusting with their help to find a sure guiding 
star of duty, and the true measure of all 
earthly grandeur. Their principles indeed 
had sometimes been austere and hard, 
counsels of perfection scarcely fitted for the frail and 
struggling, coldly disdainful of the weakness of our suf¬ 
fering manhood. But Marcus Aurelius was too gene¬ 
rous and tender-hearted to nurse such a lonely pride of 
philosophic calm. He was vigorous in questioning his 
heart, but was stern only to himself. 

The man was not forgotten in the student. We may 
still read in the familiar letters which he wrqte to his old 
friend and teacher about the pleasant days 

but without 

he spent in the country house at Lorium, loss of ten- 
how he dwells fondly on the infant graces of family affec- 
his children, and watches with anxious care tlons ’ 
the course of every little ailment. He speaks often of 
his little nestlings, and forgets his graver thoughts while 
he is w r ith them. “ The weather is bad, and 
I feel ill at ease,” he writes, “ but when my 
little girls are well, it seems that my own 
pains are of slight moment, and the weather 
is quite fair.” Fronto enters readily enough into the 


as may be 
seen in his 
letters to 
Fronto, 


9 o 


The Age of the Antonines. 


a.d. 


same vein of homely sentiment, sends his loving greet¬ 
ing to the young princesses, “kisses their fat httle toes 
and tiny hands,” and dwells complacently upon the 
simple happiness of the prince’s circle. “ I have seen 
your little ones,’’ he writes, “and no sight could have 
been more charming to me, for they are so like you in 
face that nothing could be more striking than the like¬ 
ness. I was well rewarded for my pains in journeying 
to Lorium, for the slippery road and rough ascent; for 
I had two copies of yourself beside me, and both happily 
were strong of voice, and had the look of health upon 
their faces. One held a morsel of fine white bread in 
his hands, such as a king’s son might eat, the other a 
hard black crust, fit for the child of a philosopher. In 
the pleasant prattle of their little voices I seemed to re¬ 
cognise already the clear tones of your harmonious 
speech.” 

Fronto had learned, it seems, to jest at the austerer 
studies of his former pupil, but he disliked them still as 
much as ever. Philosophy indeed was now a great mo¬ 
ral force, and the chief teacher of the heathen world; 
but he could only think of it as the mere wrangling of 
pretentious quibblers, intent only on hair splitting or 
fence of words, and with no power to guide the reason 
, or to touch the heart. Prejudiced and one- 

wno, like . . 

Faustina, sided as his criticism was, it had perhaps 
liking for some value when he urged the future sove- 
phiiosophers. re jg n to remember the responsibilities of 

high estate, and the difference between the purple of the 
Caesars and the coarse mantle of the Stoic sages. He 
had also a powerful ally who did not fail to use her in¬ 
fluence. Faustina, the mother of the little nestlings 
whom Fronto wrote about so often, was affectionate and 
tender as a wife, but had all the pride of birth and the 


147-180. Marcus Aurelius An/oninus. 


9 1 


fastidious refinement of the fashionable Roman circles. 
She had little liking doubtless for the uncourtly doctors 
of the Porch, with their philosophic talk about equality 
and rights, of manhood, grudged them their influence 
with her husband, and freely spent her woman’s wit in 
petulant sally or in mocking jest. The sages took it 
somewhat ill, misjudging her levity of manner, and saw 
only wantonness or vice in the frank gaiety of the high¬ 
born dame. Hence among the earnest thinkers, or in 
literary circles, harsh sentiments began to spread about 
Faustina, and stamped themselves perhaps in ugly me¬ 
mories on the page of formal history. 

Thus the years passed by in serious study and the 
cares of state, relieved by the tenderness of home affec¬ 
tions; but history has no more details of in¬ 
terest to give us, till at length Antoninus ^ f n Amonfnus th 
closed his long reign of prosperous calm, ^ sh ? r , ed the 

0 0 r r 9 imperial pow- 

leaving the throne to his adopted son, who er with Lucius 

was already partner in the tribunician power, 

the most expressive of the imperial honours. Marcus 

Aurelius might now have stood alone without a rival, if 

he had harboured a vulgar ambition in his soul. But he 

bethought him of the claims, else little heeded, of Lucius 

Verus, who like himself, had been adopted, at Hadrian’s 

wish, by the late Emperor, and had grown up doubtless 

in the hopes of future greatness. He was 

raised also to the throne, and Rome saw 

now, for the first time, two co-rulers share between them 

on an equal footing alt the dignity of absolute power. 

Their accession was not greeted at the first by fair 
omens of prosperity and peace, such as the world had 
now enjoyed for many years. Soon the The ominous 
bright sky was overcast, and the lowering fl^odTandwar 
storms began to burst. First the Tiber rose 


9 2 


The Age of the Antonihes. 


A D. 


to an unprecedented height, till the flood spread over all 
the low grounds of the city, with fearful loss of property 
and life, and only retired at length to leave widespread 
ruin and famine in its track. Then came rumours of 
danger and of war in far-off lands. In Britain the 
troops were on the point of rising to assert their liberty 
of choice and to raise their general to the seat of em¬ 
pire. But their experienced and gallant leader would 
not be tempted to revolt, and the soldiers soon returned 
to their allegiance, while their favourite was recalled to 
do good service shortly in the East. On the northern 
borders also the native races were in arms, and broke 
in sudden onset through the Roman lines, and a soldier 
of mark had to be sent to drive them back. But it was 
on the Euphrates that the danger seemed 
most pressing. There the Parthians, long 
kept in check by the memory of Trajan’s 
military prowess, and by the skilful policy 
of his successors, challenged once more the arms of 
Rome. Years ago they had taken offence, it seems, be¬ 
cause a ruler had been chosen for the dependent king¬ 
dom of Armenia, which had been the debateable ground 
for ages between the empires of the East and of the 
West. For awhile the w’ar had been averted by fair 
words or watchful caution, but the storm burst at last at 
an unguarded moment, and swept over the border lands 
with unresisted fury. Armenia fell into the invaders’ 
hands almost without a blow. The city in which the 
Roman general stood at bay was taken by storm; a 
whole legion cut to pieces; and Syria was laid open 
to the conquerors, who pressed on to ravage and to 
plunder. 

The danger was imminent enough to call for the pres¬ 
ence of an Emperor in the field, and Verus started for 


The danger on 
the Euphrates 
was most 
pressing. 


I47 -1 8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


93 


the East to rouse the soldiers’ courage and v 
organize the forces of defence. With him for the East, 
or before him went skilled advisers to direct 
the plan of the campaign, chief among whom was 
Avidius Cassius, a leader of ancient hardihood and 
valour. It was well for Roman honour that resolute 
men were in command; for the soldiers were demoral¬ 
ized by long years of peace. Sloth and self-indulgence 
in the Syrian cities had proved fatal to their 

A . where the 

discipline; and profligate Antioch, above soldiers were 
all, with its ill-famed haunts of Daphne, demorallzed * 
had unnerved the vigour of their manhood. They cared 
little, as we read, that their horses were ill groomed and 
their equipments out of gear, so long as their arms were 
light enough to be borne with ease, and their saddles 
stuffed with down. 

Verus, the general-in-chief, was worthy of such troops. 
He was in no haste to reach the seat of war, alarming 
as were the tidings which each fresh courier brought. 
He lingered in the south of Italy to enjoy the pleasures 
of the chase, and dallied amid the isles of Greece, where 
all his interests seemed to centre in the charms of music 
and of song. The attractions of the towns upon the 
coast of Asia tempted him often to halt upon the way, 
and when at last he came to Antioch he stooped so low 
as to treat for peace with the invader, and only resolved 
to prosecute the war in earnest when the Parthians 
spurned the proffered terms. Even then he had no 
mind to take the field in person, or risk the 
hazards of a soldier’s life, but loitered far 
behind, safe in the rear of all the fighting, 
and gave himself up without reserve to fri¬ 
volous gaieties and sensual excess, till even 
indolent natives of the Syrian towns began 


In spite of 
his inca¬ 
pacity and 
sloth, his 
generals 
made the 
Parthians 
sue for 
peace. 


94 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


to scoff, and courtly panegyrists found it hard to 
gloss over his slothful incapacity with their flattering 
phrases. 

But hardier troops were in the field meantime than 
the licentious garrison of Antioch. The armies of the 
distant frontiers sent their contingents to the East, and 
at least eight legions may be traced in the campaigns 
that followed, besides a multitude of auxiliary forces 

Happily there were also skilful generals to handle 
them aright. Statius Priscus, the commander who had 
been put forward by his men against his will as a pre¬ 
tender to the throne, proved his loyalty once more by 
his successful march into Armenia, and the conquest of 
its capital Artaxata. Avidius Cassius meantime, with 
the bulk of the Roman army, pushed on direct towards 
Parthia, proved his valour and address in many a hard- 
fought battle, and drove back the beaten enemy at last 
beyond the walls of Seleucia and Ctesiphon. The 
humbled Parthians sued for peace, and gained it at the 
price of the border lands between the two great rivers. 
The fame of these achievements found an echo possibly 
in the far regions of the east of Asia, where no sound of 
western armies had hitherto been heard. The native 
chroniclers of China date the first Roman embassy to 
the Celestial Empire, with its presents of tortoiseshell 

and ivory, from the very year in which the 

A. D. IOO. . , 

war with Parthia closed ; but the visitors, 
whether simply merchants or official envoys, entered 
China from the south, and not by the direct route 
through central Asia, which when they started was 
doubtless barred to them by the movements of the 
armies in the field. 

Five years had passed away in the course of the 
campaign, and Verus at length unwillingly prepared to 


147- 1 80. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


95 


leave the scene of his soldiers glory, but of 
, • , ^ . . Verius claims 

his own shame. Once only, at the urgent the merit of 

entreaties of his court, had he moved to the the tnumph 
front as far as the Euphrates. He had journeyed also 
to Ephesus to meet his bride Lucilla, for fear that Marcus 
Aurelius might come with her in person, to see for him- 
, self the life which his son-in-law was leading. But his 
time was chiefly spent in listless dalliance and sybaritic 
ease, in which there was little else to mark the lapse of 
time except the recurring changes from his winter- 
quarters to his summer-palace. There was little in such 
a life to fire the fancy of poet laureate or courtly chroni¬ 
cler. Yet if we read the letter which he wrote to Fronto 
on the subject of the Parthian war, we shall find that he 
expects the history on which the old professor was en¬ 
gaged to make his name illustrious to future ages. He 
promises that his generals shall forward 
their account of the battles and campaigns, writes™ 11 * 0 
with special memoirs on the nature of the courtl y. 

r , panegyric. 

country and the climate, and offers even to 
send some notes himself, so great is his desire for glory. 
But calmly, as a thing of course, he takes the credit of 
all the successes won by the valour of his captains, and 
begs the rhetorician to paint in striking colours the 
general dismay in Syria before the Emperor arrived 
upon the scene to chain victory once more to the Roman 
eagles. The history which Fronto wrote has not sur¬ 
vived ; but we may judge perhaps somewhat of its tone, 
and of the author’s willingness to cater for the vanity of 
his princely correspondent, when we read his pretentious 
eulogy of the struggle of generosity between the two co¬ 
rulers on the subject of the titles to be taken in honour 
of the successes in the East. Marcus Aurelius declined 
to be called Parthicus or Armeniacus in memory of a 


The Age of the A?itonines. 


A.D. 



war in which he took no part; but Verus, not to be out¬ 
done in seeming modesty, would only accept the names 
on condition that he shared them with his colleague. 
“To have pressed this point and won it,” says the 
courtier, in his hyperbolic vein, “is a greater thing than 
all the glories of the past campaigns. Many a strong¬ 
hold like Artaxata had fallen before the onset of thy 
conquering arms, but 'it was left for thy eloquence to 
storm, in the resolute persistence of thy brother to refuse 
the proffered honours, a fortress more impregnable.” 

Little is told us of what passed meantime during the 
five years in Italy, where Marcus Aurelius ruled alone; 


and the scanty fragments of our knowledge 
come chiefly from monumental sources. The 


M. Aurelius 

meantime 

endows 


charitable endowments for poor children founded by 
foundations, the charity of recent Emperors were put 

under the charge of consular officials instead of simple 
knights, in token of the importance of the work, while 
on occasion of the imperial marriage, which bound the 
princes by fresh ties, the claims of poverty were not for¬ 
gotten, but fresh funds were set apart to rear more little 
ones, who were to bear probably the names of the two 
reigning houses, as the earlier foundlings had been 
called after Trajan and Faustina. 

Another measure of this date seems to have been 
prompted by a tender interest for the material welfare 
of the people. Some four or five officials of high rank 
had been sent from Rome of late with large powers of 


jurisdiction in the county courts of Italy, in 
the interest alike of central authority and 
local justice, rising as they did above the 


appoints 

juridiciy 


town councillors and magistrates of boroughs. These 
“ juridici," as they were called, were now entrusted with 
the further duty of watching over the supplies of food. 


i47 -I 8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


97 


and the regulation of the corn trade, for Italy was letting 
her lands pass out of culture, and growing more depend¬ 
ent every year upon the mercy of the winds and the 
surplus of foreign harvests. An inscription found at 
Rimini informs us that the seven wards of the old city, 
and all the corporations in it, passed a public vote of 
thanks to one of these officials for his laborious exertions 
in behalf of themselves and all their neighbours in the 
hard times of famine. 

A third change breathes the same spirit 
of compassion for the helpless and the des¬ 
titute. A “praetor” was specially commis¬ 
sioned to watch over the welfare of orphan children, 
and to see that the guardians did not abuse their trust or 


and a praetor 
to be guardian 
of orphan 
children. 


neglect the interests of their wards. By a singular coin¬ 
cidence the first of these officials thus appointed became 
soon after a juridicus in Northern Italy, and also won an 
honorary notice of the energy with which he had met 
the crisis of famine, and brought to countless homes the 
Emperor’s thoughtful tenderness. 

A new provision was closely connected with these 
changes, as well as with the needs of a well- , , 

ordered state. All births in Italy were to births to be 
be registered henceforth in a public office 
within the space of thirty days—a necessary step if pub¬ 
lic or private charity were to try to cope with the spread 
of pauperism and despair. 

For the rest the Emperor had no high ambition, nor 
cared to signalise himself by great achievements. He 
was content to let the Senate rule, and treat- He works 
ed it throughout with marked respect, be- unremitting- 

. . . , ly himself 

ing always present at its meetings when he at public 

could, and when business was pressing he 

sat oftentimes till nightfall. He never spared himself 


H 


9 8 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


meantime, but worked on with unremitting labour till 
his pale face and careworn looks told all who loved him 
how serious was the strain upon his feeble powers of 
body, and made his physicians warn him that he must 
give himself more rest or die. For he was anxious above 
all things to do justice promptly to his people, by him¬ 
self or through his servants, and to have no arrears of 
work. With this view he added largely to the number 
of the days on which the law courts might be opened, 
and sought the counsel and the active aid of the most 
enlightened men around him. His old master Junius 
Rusticus had to give up his learned leisure, and take 
perforce to politics, to be consul first, then prefect of the 
city, to show his old pupil by his own example how to 
turn the Stoic maxims to practical account, and prove 
that the ruler of mankind must learn to govern others 
by first governing himself. 


But Marcus Aurelius had little leisure after this to stu¬ 
dy the arts of civil rule in peace, for untoward destiny 
required him to spend the best years of his 
life in an inglorious warfare with enemies 
unknown to fame. His was too gentle and 


but was 
called away 
from civil 
duties to the 
distasteful 
work of war. 


sensitive a nature to feel at home among 


the armies : too large-minded to be dazzled 
by the vanity of fading laurels. The war was none of 
his own seeking, and he would gladly have purchased 
peace at any price save that of honour or of the safety 
of his people. But the dangers were very imminent and 
grave, and could not everywhere be safely left to the 
care of generals of lower rank. The austere lessons of 
philosophy had taught him not to play the sophist with 
his conscience, or to shirk distasteful offices when duty 
called. 

The Roman lines lay like a broad belt around the 


147 — 1 80 . Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


99 


civilised world, and the trusty legionaries stood there on 
watch and ward. The wild tribes beyond had been long 
quiet, cowed seemingly by Trajan’s martial energy and 
Hadrian’s armaments of war. But now some passion¬ 
ate impulse seemed to pass like a fiery cross along the 
borders, and barbarous hordes came swarming up with 
fury to the attack, and threatened to burst the barriers 
raised against them. The Parthians had been humbled 
for a time, but were soon to show themselves in arms 
once more. The Moors of Africa were on the move, 
and before long were sweeping over Spain with havoc 
and desolation in their track. The Caledonians of the 
far west were irritated rather than frightened by the long 
lines of wall and dyke which had been built to shut 
them in, and their untamed fierceness was enough to 
make the Roman troops retire before the children of the 
mist. 

From the mouth of the Dniester to where the Rhine 
bears to the sea the waters of all its tributary rivers a 
multitude of restless tribes with uncouth name and un¬ 
known antecedents, Teutonic, Slave, Finnish, and Tar¬ 
tar, were roaming in hostile guise along the northern 
frontiers, and ready to burst in at every unguarded 
point. It is time to enter more into details on the sub¬ 
ject of these wars, to see in what spirit the meditative 
student faced the rough work of war, and how far he 
showed the forethought of a ruler cast on evil times. 

We turn with natural interest to read of the fortunes 
of his arms in Britain, but there are only 
scanty data to reward our search. At the ^he Jo^tunes^ 
outset of this period a new commander, arms in 
Calpurnius Agricola by name, had been 
sent to meet the threatening rumours of a rising among 
the native or the Roman forces. His name recalled the 


IOO 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


memory of the famous captain of an earlier age, whose 
career of glory in the island found in his kinsman Taci¬ 
tus a chronicler of note. But there is no evidence that 
the efforts of the later general were crowned with like suc¬ 
cess. Seven years afterwards at the least he is mentioned 
in an inscription found near Hadrian’s wall; but there 
is no trace of any forward movement in the course of all 
these years, not a single monumental notice of a Roman 
soldier upon Scottish soil, though under Antoninus an 
imperial legate had pushed his way some eighty miles 
beyond the old ramparts of defence, and raised a second 
line of wall and dyke between the Clyde and the Frith 
of Forth to screen the conquered lands from the indom¬ 
itable races of the north. Reinforcements had been 
brought meantime from countries far away; five thousand 
horsemen came in one contingent from the lower Dan¬ 
ube, where a friendly tribe had taken service in the pay 
of Rome, but they found their match in the hardy war¬ 
riors of the Piets and Scots, before whom Sarmatian 
ferocity and Roman discipline combined could scarcely 
make head or even hold their ground. But formal his¬ 
tory hardly deigns to note their doings at this time, and 
the troubles of that distant province seemed insignificant 
enough, no doubt, to the imperial court. 

The dangers on another frontier were more threaten¬ 
ing. The army of defence upon the Danube had been 

weakened to meet the pressure of the Par- 

the^DanJbe° n t ^ 1 ’ an war - an d the Marcomanni and their 
was more neighbours, who were constantlv on the 

pressing, . J 

alert, had taken advantage of the withdrawal 
of the legions, and harried the undefended provinces 
with fire and sword. From the mouth of the Danube to 
the confines of Illyria the barbarian world was on the 
move, and all those elements of disorder, if allowed to 


i 47 -i 8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


IOI 


gather undisturbed, might roll ere long as an avalanche 
of ruin on the south. There was no time to be lost in 
parrying this danger, when peace was restored on the 
Euphrates. The acclamations of the city populace had 
hardly died away, or the pomp of the triumphal show 
faded from men’s thoughts when both Emperors resolved 
to start together to conduct their armies in the field. 
But in spite of the successes lately won they 

. . c . . r : and both 

were in no cheerful mood to open fresh Emperors 
campaigns. The tone of public sentiment northMn 0r th ° 
was sadly low; the brooding fancy of the peo- frontK ' r > 
pie drew presages of disaster and defeat for coming days 
from the misfortunes of the present. The 
effects of the famine were still felt in Italy, while the 

J plague was 

though years had passed since its ravages had spreading 
first begun, and officers of state had been withfntfie 
ready with their timely succours. A yet 
more fatal visitant had stalked among them, 
and spread a panic through the hearts of men. The sol¬ 
diers who had come back from the East to take part in 
the reviews which graced the public triumph, or to return 
to their old quarters, brought with them the fatal seeds 
of plague, and spread them rapidly through all the 
countries of the West. The scourge passed on its deso¬ 
lating course from land to land. In the capital itself 
numbers of honoured victims fell, while deaths followed 
so fast upon each other that all the carriages available 
were needed for the transport of the plague-stricken 
corpses through the street. Stringent laws had to be 
passed to regulate the interment of the bodies, and pro¬ 
visions made in the interests of the poorer classes, for 
whom the state took up the task which slipped from their 
despairing hands. While men’s hearts were thus failing 
them for fear, and death was knocking at the door of 


102 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A D. 


races retire, 
and beg for 
peace; 


every class without distinction, appeal was made to the 
ministrations of religion to soothe and reassure their 
troubled minds. Lectistcrnia , as they were called, were 
solemnised; days of public mourning and humiliation 
set apart; and as if the old national deities were inef¬ 
fectual to save, men turned in their bewilderment to the 
mystic rites of alien creeds, and drew near with offering 
and prayer to the altars of many an unknown god. 

The races of the North meantime, who had learnt that 
the Emperors were on the way, already heard 
The border upon the border the tramp of the advancing 
legions, and their ardour for war was cooling 
fast in the presence of the forces of defence. 
Hardly had the princes arrived at Aquileia, when the 
tidings came that their enemies had withdrawn beyond 
the river, and were sending in hot haste envoys to sue 
for peace, bearing the heads of the counsellors who had 
urged them to attack the Roman lines. So complete 
seemed the discouragement among them that the Ouadi, 
who were at the time without a leader, asked to have a 
chieftain given them by Rome. Verus, we read, in the 
carelessness of his self-indulgent nature, thought that 
the danger was quite over, and was urgent to return. 
But it needed little foresight to discern that it was but a 
temporary lull in the fury of the storm, and that only a 
stern and watchful front could maintain the 
ground which had been won. The meagre 
annals of the period fail to tell us how long 
the Emperors were in the field. We only 
hear that within two years of their return 
they were summoned from Rome once more 
by the news that the hollow truce was bro¬ 
ken, and their old enemies again in arms They set 
out together, as before, for Aquileia, where the armies 


but Vefore long 
are in arras 
again, and the 
Emperors, 
marching 
to attack 
them, 

a.d. 169. 


I47 -i So. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


103 


were to be organized and drilled during the winter 
months, to be ready for the spring when the campaign 
might open in real earnest. 

But the plague, whose ravages had never wholly 
ceased meantime, broke out afresh with redoubled fury 
in the crowded camp, and the death rate mounted with 
alarming speed. The famous Galen was called in to try 
all that'medical experience and skill could 
do, but his efforts failed to arrest the spread by e t he eCked 
of pestilence or bring its victims back to spread of 
health. In face of such fearful waste of life the P la e ue > 
the plan of the war had to be changed. The camp was 
broken up without delay; the various battalions were 
dispersed in separate cantonments; and the Emperors 
set forth on their return. 

They were not far upon the homeward way when, at 
Altinum, Verus was struck down with a sudden attack, 
from which he never rallied, and Marcus h _ ch 
Aurelius was left to rule alone. Alone in- fatal to 
deed he had often stood already; the col¬ 
league who was taken from him had helped him little 
with the cares of state, and there were few who could 
regret his loss. Unnerved by years of selfish luxury in. 
the East, Verus had come back with shattered body and 
with diseased mind to startle the sober citizens of Rome 
with freaks of dissolute wantonness which recalled the 
memory of Nero and the orgies of his House of Gold. 
Marcus Aurelius was not blind to the luxury and extra¬ 
vagance of his ignoble nature. He had sent him to the 
East, perhaps, in hope that the braver manhood in him 
might be roused by the sobering contact of real cares. 
He had seen to his dismay that the careless worldling 
had come back with a motley train of actors, dancers, 
parasites, and buffoons, to be the pastimes of his idle 


The Age of the Antoni?ies. 


a.d. 


104 


life, while in default of manlier pleasures he loved to 
have gladiators in to fence and hack themselves before 
his eyes. 

Still the Emperor had borne calmly and patiently the 
vices of his colleague, and even now that he was dead 
„ , he proposed the usual vote of honours in 

Thenceforth 

M. Aurelius the Senate; but he dropped some words, 
reigned alone, pgj-j^pg unconsciously, which betrayed to 

watchful ears that he had long chafed and fretted, 
though in silence, and now was resolved to rule alone 
without the embarrassment of divided power. He might 
perhaps have been more careful had he known that ru¬ 
mour was busy with the death of Verus, and pointing to 
foul play with which his own name was coupled, though 
indeed in all days of personal government scandalous 
gossip circulates about the court, and, as an old bio¬ 
grapher remarks, no one can hope to rise above suspicion 
if the pure name of M. Aurelius was thus befouled. 

He had lost also a young son whom he loved fondly 
and mourned deeply, for the sages of the Porch had 
never taught him, as they did to others, to disguise his 
feelings under a cloak of Stoic calm, and the Senate’s 
votes of honours and of statues were but a sorry com¬ 
fort to the tender father. 

But he had little leisure for his grief. The danger on 
the Danube was still urgent, and the same year saw him 

and was soon on ce more on his way northward, to guide 
called once the plans and share the labours of the war. 
seat of war in All through his reign that danger lasted; 

nor did he ever shirk the irksome duty, but 
was constantly upon the scene of action, and lived 
henceforth more on the frontier than at Rome. In 
default of full details in the ancient writers we may judge 
how arduous was the struggle by the evidence of the 


14 7— I So. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 

inscriptions. Of the thirty legions which 
made up the regular complement of the 
Roman army, more than half took part in 
the Marcomannic war, and have left repeated 
tokens of their presence in epitaphs or votive offerings. 
We may find the traces also of the irregular contingents 
which marched with them to the field from many a far- 
off province and its fringe of barbarous races, and which 
though variously manned and armed were welded into 
unity by the stern discipline of Rome. For she soon 
learned the lesson, since familiar to the world, to group 
distinct nationalities round a common centre by a strong 
imperial system in which each helped in arms to keep 
the others down. As the war went on, the Emperor had 
recourse to far more questionable levies, if what we read 
is true, enrolling exiles, gladiators, and even slaves in 
two new legions which he brought into the field. The 
work of recruiting went slowly forward, and could scarce¬ 
ly supply the constant drain of war. The central pro¬ 
vinces had long ago wearied of military service, since 
Augustus raised his legions on the border lands, and at 
Rome itself no volunteers would answer to the call; but 
the lazy rabble hooted as they saw the gladiators go, and 
said in hot displeasure, “Our gloomy prince would rob 
us even of our pleasures to make us turn philosophers.” 

The pestilence was still abroad, and spread its rava¬ 
ges among the ranks, clouding with discouragement all 
their hopes and efforts. They showed little courage in 
the field; sometimes they were driven back in panic 
fear. In one such rout the fortress of Aquileia had near¬ 
ly fallen, but the bravery of its garrison saved it from 
disaster. To make matters worse, the treasury was 
empty, drained perhaps by the charitable outlay for the 
sufferers by plague and famine. The Emperor drew 


io 5 


where the 
struggle was 
long and 
arduous. 


io6 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


upon his privy purse ; when that too failed, he stripped 
his palaces of their costly furniture, put up to auction 
the art-treasures which Hadrian’s fine taste had gathered 
in the course of the journeys of a lifetime, and sold them 
all without reserve, while for himself he needed little- 
more than the general’s tent and soldier’s cloak. 

Brighter days set in at last to reward his persevering 
courage, though dangers meantime had thickened in his 
path. The tribes of the Rhine and Danube had joined 
hands, forgetting for a while their mutual rivalries in 
the hope of carrying the Roman lines in one great si¬ 
multaneous assault. Their women were stirred with 
patriotic ardour, and fought and died beside their hus¬ 
bands. The rigour of the winter could not check them ; 
for in time of frost, we read, they challenged the legion¬ 
aries to mortal duel on the ice-bound river, where the 
southerners, dismayed at first, found a firm footing at 
the last by standing on their shields, and closing in a 
death grapple with the foe. In the ranks of Rome none 
showed more resolution than the Emperor himself, none 
faced with a calmer or a stouter heart the hardship of 
the wintry climate, the monotony of the life of camps, 
or the horrors of the crash of war. At length he was 
rewarded by seeing the assailants sullenly retire before 
the firm front of his array ; and the Danubian provinces 
were left a while undisturbed. 


Not content with resting on his laurels he set forth to 
When the chastise the Quadi, and drive back the hos¬ 


tile tribes yet further from his borders. The 
hard winter had been followed by a hot 
and parching summer which made the la¬ 
bours of the march exhausting to the troops. 
In the midst of the campaign they were 
lured into a pass where the natives beset them on all 


Marcomannic 
war was over 
for a time, the 
campaign 
against the 
Quadi fol¬ 
lowed. 


i47 -I 8o. Marcus Aure/ius Antoninus. 107 

sides. Worn out by heat and thirst, and harassed by 
continual onsets, they were on the point of breaking in 
disgraceful rout when the scorching sun was covered, 
and the rain burst in torrents from the clouds to cool 
and refresh the weary combatants. The enemy came 
swarming up once more to the attack, but they were 
met with pelting hail and lightning flashes, and driven 
back in utter consternation to lay down their arms be¬ 
fore the imperial forces. Dion Cassius, who tells the 
story in greatest detail, accounts for the marvel by the 
magic incantations of an Egyptian in the army, whose 
potent spells unlocked the windows of heaven, and 
called to the rescue powers unseen. And in accord¬ 
ance with the legend we may see on the monumental 
column, which pourtrays in sculptured forms the mili¬ 
tary story of this reign, a Jupiter Pluvius of giant stature 
whose arms and hair seem dripping with the moisture 
which the Romans run to gather, while the thunderbolts 
are falling fast in the meantime upon the hostile ranks. 
But Xiphilinus, the Christian monk who abridged 
the historian’s tedious chapters, taxes his . 

. . in the course 

author roundly with inventing a lying tale of which we 
to support the credit of the heathen gods, supposed mar- 
His pious fancy fondly dwells upon a mira- ^^dering 
cle of grace, vouchsafed in answer to the Legion.” 

® A. D. I74. 

Christian prayers of a battalion come from 
Melitene, in the east of Asia, which was called thence¬ 
forth the “Thundering” legion, in token of the prodigy 
wrought by their ministry of intercession. The fathers 
of the Church took kindly to the story, and pointed the 
moral with becoming fervour. But the twelfth legion, 
which had indeed been sent long since from the siege 
of Jerusalem to Melitene, to defend the line of the Eu¬ 
phrates, had borne in earlier years the name, not of 


io8 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


“ Fulminans ” indeed but “ Fulminata,” and so appears 
on an inscription which was written as early as the time 
of Nero. 

There was now a prospect of at least a breathing 
space in the long struggle with the races of the North. 
The humbled tribes consented to give back the captives 
swept away in border forays. The human spoil to be 
surrendered by the Quadi reached the tale of 50,000, and 
a neighbouring race which had resisted with desperate 
valour restored, we are told, twice that number when 
the war was closed. Some hordes of the Marcomanni 
consented to abandon their old homes, and were quar¬ 
tered in the country near Ravenna ; but before long they 
tired of the dulness of inglorious peace, and took once 
more to butchery and rapine, till Italy sadly rued the fatal 
experiment which future Emperors were one day to copy. 

The Emperor was still busy with the arrears of work 
which the war had brought with it in its train, when the 
alarming news arrived that a governor in 

The revolt . 

of Avidius the East had raised the banner of revolt, 
and seemed likely to carry with him the 
whole province as well as the legions under his com¬ 
mand. Avidius Cassius had won distinction in the Par¬ 
thian campaigns, and to his skill and energy the suc¬ 
cesses of the war were largely due, while the general in 
chief was lounging at ease in the haunts of Syrian luxury. 
He had been chosen at the first as a commander of the 
good old type to tighten the bands of discipline among 
the dissolute soldiers who were more formidable to quiet 
citizens than to the foe. He soon checked with an un¬ 
sparing hand the spread of luxury and self-indulgence, 
let them stroll no more at will in the licentious precincts 
of Daphne, or in like scenes of riot, but kept them to 
hard fare and steady drill, threatening to make them 


i47 _I ^o- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 109 

winter in the open field, till he had them perfectly in 
hand. Before long a new spirit of hardihood and valour 
spread among the ranks, till the army, going forward 
with their leader in the path of glory, proved itself 
worthy of the ancient memories of Rome. 

Yet Verus eyed with jealousy the talents which 
eclipsed his own, was stung by words or looks of sar¬ 
casm which fell sometimes from the hardy soldier, or 
perhaps divined the latent germs of the ambition which 
was one day to make a rebel of the loyal 

. against whom 

warrior. He warned his brother Emperor M. Aurelius 

1 1 • 1 1 11* had been 

to be upon his guard, and urged him even war ned in 
to dismiss the general from his post before vain ’ 
his influence with the army grew too potent The 
answer of M. Aurelius is recorded, and throws an in¬ 
teresting light on his pure unselfish nature. “ I have 
read,” he writes, “ the letter in which you give utterance 
to fears ill-becoming an Emperor or a government like 
ours. If it is the will of heaven that Cassius should 
mount the throne, resistance on our part is idle. Your 
own forefather used to say that no prince can kill his 
own successor. If it is not written in the book of destiny 
that he shall reign, disloyal efforts on his part will be 
followed by his fall. Why then deprive ourselves, on 
mere suspicion, of a good general, whose services are 
needful to the state ? His death, you say, would secure 
the prospects of my children. Nay, but it will be time 
for the sons of M. Aurelius to die when Cassius is able 
more than they to win the love and further the happiness 
of our people.” Nor were these mere idle phrases, for 
Cassius was retained in command of Syria and the 
border armies, and treated with an undiminished confi¬ 
dence, which he repayed by quelling a revolt in Egypt 
and by victories in Arabia. 


no 


The Age of the Antonines . 


A. D. 


Avidius Cas¬ 
sius for the 
powers of the 
Emperor as 
a ruler, 


But the man of action seems to have despised the 
scholar prince as a mere bookworm, fitter to take part 
in verbal quibbles than in cares of state, to 
The contempt h ave thought him too easy-tempered and 
indulgent to keep strict watch over his ser¬ 
vants and check their knavery and greed. 
In a letter to his son-in-law, which is still 
preserved, he dwells on such abuses, how 
truly we have no means of knowing. “Marcus is a very 
worthy man, but in his wish to be thought 
Vulcacn Galli- nierciful he bears with those of whose cha- 

cam c. 14. 

racter he thinks but ill. Where is Cato the 
old censor, where are the strict rules of ancient times? 
They are vanished long ago, and no one dreams of re¬ 
viving them again; for our prince spends his time in 
star gazing, in fine talk about the elements and the 
human soul, in questions of justice and of honour, but 
neglects the interests of state meanwhile. There is need 
to draw the sword, to prune and lop away with energy, 
before the commonwealth can be put upon its former 
footing. As for the governors of the provinces, if gov¬ 
ernors they can be called who think that offices of state 
are given them that they may live at ease and make 
their fortunes—was not a praetorian praefect 
only the other day a starveling mendicant, 
rich as he is now?—let them enjoy their 
wealth and take their pleasure while they can, for if 
heaven smiles upon my cause they shall fill the treasury 
with the riches they disgorge.” It would be hazardous 
to accept the views of a discontented rival in place of 
solid evidence upon this subject; but it is likely enough 
that the Emperor may have been too tolerant and gentle 
to repress with needful promptitude the abuses of his 
servants. The machinery of government was perhaps 


and com¬ 
plaints of his 
subordinates. 


147-180. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


111 


out of gear when the chief who applied the motive force 
was busy with a great war upon a distant frontier, and 
glad to steal the moments of his leisure for the congenial 
studies of philosophy. 

Certainly if we may trust the stories gleaned by the 
writers of a later age, Avidius Cassius was not the man 
to err on the side of sentimental weakness. He had 
gained a name, it seems, among the soldiers for a 
severity near akin to cruelty, had invented startling 
forms of punishment for marauders and deserters, cruci¬ 
fying some in frightful torments, and leaving others ham¬ 
strung by the way to be a living warning to the rest. He 
carried the sternness of his discipline so far as to hurry 
off to execution the officers who had just returned in 
triumph from a border foray for which he had himself 
given no sanction. But we can put little trust in the 
talk of the day, for few cared to deal tenderly with the 
memory of an unsuccessful rebel. Probably it is only 
such an afterthought of history when we are told that he 
came of the family of Cassius, the murderer of the great 
Caesar, and that like his ancestor he hated the very name 
of monarchy, deploring often that the imperial power 
could only be assailed by one who must be emperor 
himself. It is idle now upon such evidence as we pos¬ 
sess to speculate upon his motives, or to say how far 
personal ambition was disguised by larger 
and unselfish aims. Of Marcus Aurelius he 
seldom spoke, at least in public, save in re¬ 
spectful tones, and only appealed to his 
partisans to rally round him when a false 
rumour of the prince’s death was spread abroad. 

The movement was short-lived, threatening as was its 
march at first. It spread through Syria without let or 
hindrance, and all beyond the Taurus was won by the 


We know little 
of the motives 
of the move¬ 
ment, which 
soon failed. 
ad. 175. 


I 12 


The Age of the An f onines. 


A.D. 


usurper’s arms. It seemed that there was no time to be 
lost; and the Emperor was on his way to face the strug¬ 
gle in which an empire was at stake, udien the news came 
that Cassius was no more, having met an inglorious 
death by the hand of a petty officer of his own army, 
^ the victim of revenge more probably than 

1 he Emperor 

showed no vin- loyal feeling. The Emperor heard the ti- 
dictive feeling, ca i m }y > showed regret at the death of 

the pretender, and would sanction no vindictive mea¬ 
sures, though Faustina, whom idle rumour has accused 
of urging Cassius to revolt, had written to him before iii 
a tone of passionate resentment, praying him not to 
spare the traitor, but to think of the safety of his chil¬ 
dren. He answered her with tenderness, chiding her 
gently for her revengeful language, and reminding her 
that mercy was the blessed prerogative of imperial 
power. He wrote in a like spirit to the Senate also, to 
let its members know that he would have no sentence 
of attainder passed on the wife or children of the fallen 
leader, and no proscription of his partisans. For himself 
he only wished that none had died already, to rob him 
of his privilege of mercy, and now he was resolved that 
in that cause no more blood should flow. The Senate 
read his words with gladness, were well pleased to drop 
the veil on the intrigues in which some of their own 
body were concerned, and carefully entered on their 
minutes all the-dutiful phrases and ejaculations in which 
the counsellors showed their thankfulness and admira¬ 
tion. The letters and despatches of the rebel, which 
were full, probably, of fatal evidence against his accom¬ 
plices in the army or at Rome, fell into the hands of the 
governor of Syria, or some said of the Emperor himself, 
but were burnt without delay to relieve the fears of the 
survivors. 


I47 -i 8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus . 


The people of Antioch had sided eagerly with Cassius, 
and used their wit in contemptuous jest against their 
prince, moving him to resent their disloyalty 
by forbidding for a while all public gather- ^ 
ings for business or pleasure. Soon, how- order in 

A . the East* 

ever, he relented, and even visited the city, 
when he passed by in his state progress to restore order 
to the troubled East. Now for the first time in his career 
could he set foot in those far-off regions, and wander 
among the memories of ancient peoples. Before he 
left Rome, as it would seem, he had the tribunician title 
conferred on Commodus, the son who was soon to take 
his place, and then more than a year was spent in the 
long journey. His wife Faustina died upon Tr 

.... His wife 

the way, at a tiny village near the range of Faustina 

rp • j * i /* i died upon. 

laurus, which was raised, in honour of her, the way. 
to the dignity of a city and a colony. For A< D ‘ I7S * 
the empress herself the Senate passed, at his request, 
the solemn vote which raised her to the rank of the im¬ 
mortals, and one of the sculptures of his triumphal arch 
pourtrayed her as borne aloft to heaven by the guardian 
arms of Fame. 

He took Egypt in his homeward way, and at Alexan¬ 
dria was willing to forget the signs of sympathy which 
the citizens had shown his rival, leaving his daughter to 
their care in token of the confidence with which he 
trusted them. At Smyrna he wished to hear the emi¬ 
nent Aristides lecture, whose vanity was such that he 
would only consent to speak while attended with a long 
train of pupils, who must have free liberty to clap him 
when they would. The Emperor let them all in willingly 
enough, and himself gave the signal for applause at the 
eloquent periods of the famous sophist. 

At Athens, where he left some lasting traces of his 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


114 


During his 
short rest at 
Rome, A.D., 
177, he 
endowed 
the Puellse 
Faustinianse 
and married 
his son 
Commodus, 


visit in the endowment of professorial chairs, he had him¬ 
self admitted to the Eleusinian mysteries, whose vener¬ 
able symbols might haply shadow forth to his inquiring 
fancy some new beliefs or hopes about the world unseen. 

For more than a year the Emperor had rest at Rome, 
and signalised his period of repose by charitable cares 
for the Puellce Faustmiana ?, the poor girls 
who were to be reared in memory of his wife, 
and bear her name. We may see at Rome 
a bas-relief in which the sculptor’s fancy 
has pourtrayed the maidens clustering round 
the noble dame, and pouring corn into the 
folds of the garment which one of them is 
holding for the purpose. The medals also of the year 
record the liberal largess given to the populace of Rome at 
the festivities which followed the marriage of the youthful 
Commodus, on which occasion the bonds which the state 
held against its debtors were thrown into the fire in the 
forum, while similar munificence was shown in helping 
the ruined Smyrna to rise once more in its old stately 
beauty after the havoc caused by a great earthquake. 

Meantime the thunder-clouds were gathering on the 
northern frontier, and the military chiefs were anxious 
to have the Emperor again upon the scene. 
Once more he started for the seat of war, 
after observing with a scrupulous care the 
ceremonial customs of old time. The spear¬ 
head taken from the shrine of Mars was 
dipped in blood and hurled by the prince’s hand in the 
direction of the hostile borders, within which in the 
earlier days of the Republic the lance itself was flung as 
a symbol of the war thereby declared. Once more victory 
crowned the efforts of the Roman leaders, and the title 
of Imperator was taken for the tenth time by the prince. 


but had 
soon to 
start again 
for the 
northern 
wars, 


14 7-180. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus . 115 

The war itself seemed well-nigh over, but M. Aurelius 
was not permitted to survive it. 

While in Pannonia, either at Vienna or at Sirmium, 
he was struck down by disease, probably by the plague, 
whose ravages may still be traced along those countries 
by the evidence of old inscriptions. Dion Cassius, as 
usual, takes up the vilest story he can find, 
and charges Commodus with parricide, in 
the form of poison given by a doctor’s hand. down on his 
Other writers tell us only that the dying a.d. 180. 
Emperor’s son showed little feeling, save the 
selfish wish to escape from the danger of contagion by a 
speedy flight. When the friends who were gathered 
round his deathbed asked whom he wished to be the 
guardians of his young successor, he answered only 
“Yourselves, if he be worthy then drawing his Stoic 
mantle round his head, he died as he had lived, with 
gentle dignity. His health had never been robust, and 
* it was sorely tried by the hardships of a soldier’s life, by 
hurried journeys to and fro, and the rigour of those 
winters by the Danube. His resolute spirit had drawn 
thus far on its reserves of moral force to keep the 
frail body to its work, but the keen blade wore out its 
sheath at last. 

The Romans mourned their Emperor as they had 
seldom mourned for one before, yet on the day when the 
funeral procession passed along the streets 
they abstained from outward show of grief, grief ofhis 
convinced as they were, says his biographer, subjects ‘ - 
that heaven had only lent him for a time, and taken him 
soon back again to his own place among the immortal 
gods. “ You also,” adds the writer, ad¬ 
dressing Diocletian his prince, “regard M. fil;c.^ 0 * 
Aurelius as a god, and make him the object 


n6 


The Age of the Antonines . 


A.D. 


of a special worship, praying oftentimes that you may 
copy the virtues of a ruler whom Plato himself with all 
his lessons of philosophy, could not excel.” 

In honour of the victories which his arms had won 

over the formidable warriors of those border 

The monu- . , _ 

ments to his lands, great monuments were raised at Rome. 

li nour 0 

One of these, an arch of triumph, stood for 
nearly fifteen centuries till a Pope (Alexander VII.), 
ordered it to be thrown down, because it was thought to 
block the way through which in days of carnival the 
crowds of masked revellers used to pass. “ The arch,” 
says a modern writer, “had happily escaped the barba¬ 
rians, the mediaeval times, the Renaissance ; but a Pope 
was found not only to lay bold hands upon it, but to 
have the naivete to take credit to himself for doing so in 
an inscription which the curious still may read upon the 
site.” 

A second monument is standing still, but the papal 
government which dealt so hardly with the arch of tri¬ 
umph, tried to rob the Emperor of this glory also, for the 
title carved upon his column by the order of a second 
Pope (Sixtus V.) ascribes the work to Antoninus Pius. 
Like Trajan’s column, of which it is a copy, it is formed 
of cylinders of marble piled upon each other, round 
which is coiled in spiral form a long series of bas-reliefs 
which illustrate the Marcomannic war. The literary 
records of the ten years’ struggle are too meagre to en¬ 
able us to give their local colour to the scenes pictorially 
rendered ; the sculptured figures too complacently exhibit 
the unvarying success of Roman armies to represent with 
fairness a war in which the German and Sarmatian tribes 
tasked year after year the military resources of the Em¬ 
pire. One set of images there is which frequently recurs 
in varying forms, and we may trust to these as evidence 


147“ I 8°- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus . 


117 

of the constant hindrance to the forward movement of 
the legions in the wild lands beyond the Danube. The 
broad current of the great river and its tributary streams, 
the uncleared forest, and the dangerous morasses, are 
often shown in symbolic guise upon the column, and in 
these Roman vanity was ready to admit the obstacles and 
perils which carried with them no dishonour to the eagles. 

Trophies of war were little suited to the character of 
such a ruler, but happily we have a worthier monument 
in the “ Thoughts ” or “ Meditations ” which, intended 
for no eye but his, reflect his passing sentiments from day 
to day. Written here and there in the moments of his 
leisure, sometimes on the eve of battle in „ Medita 

the general’s tent, sometimes in the dreary tions”are afar 

. j , , worthier mon- 

monotony of winter quarters and by the U ment of his 
morasses of the Danube, they have little gemus ’ 
nicety of style or literary finish, they contain no system 
of philosophy set off with parade of dialectic fence; but 
there is in them what is better far, the truthful utterance 
of an earnest soul, which would lay bare 

. , . L c reflecting his 

its inmost thoughts, study the secrets 01 its habits of 
strength and weakness, and be by turns the 
accused, the witness, advocate and judge. 

Self-enquiry such as this had been of old the favourite 
tenet of Pvthagorean schools, it had been pressed by 
Socrates upon his age with a sort of missionary fervour, 
it had since passed almost as a commonplace into the 
current systems of the day, and become a recognised 
duty with the earnest-minded, just as the practice of con¬ 
fession in the Church of Rome. With M. Aurelius it 
was a lifelong habit, and covered the whole range of 
thought and action. “How hast thou be- Medit v 3I 
haved thus far,” he asks himself, “ to the 
gods, thy parents, brethren, children, teachers, to those 


A.D. 


118 The Age of the Antonines. 

who looked after thy infancy, to thy friends, kinsfolk, to 
thy slaves ? Think if thou hast hitherto behaved to all 
in such a way that this may be said of thee, 

Ne’er has he wronged a man in word or deed. 

Call to recollection how many things thou hast passed 
through, and what thou hast been able to endure, and 
that the history of thy life is fully told and thy service 
drawing to its close ; think how many fair things thou 
hast seen, and how many pleasures and pains thou hast 
despised ; how much that the world holds in honour thou 
hast spurned ; and with how many ill-minded folks thou 
hast dealt kindly.” In the course of such reflections he 
recurs with tender gratitude to the memory of those who 
watched over his early years, or helped to 
form his character or enrich his thought; to 
the good parents, teachers, kinsmen, friends, 
for the blessings of whose care he thanks the 
gods so fervently, while he dwells fondly on 
the features of the moral character of each. 
He speaks of his mother’s cheerful piety and kindly tem¬ 
per, of the instinctive delicacy with which she shunned 
not the practice merely but the thought of evil, of how 
she spent with him the last years of her short life, guard¬ 
ing the virgin modesty of his young mind, that he might 
grow up with the purity of his manhood unbefouled. 

The twenty years of unbroken intercourse with his 
adoptive father had not faded from his thoughts when 
he penned in all sincerity these graceful lines : 

Medit vi o " ever ything as a pupil of Antoninus. 

Remember his constancy in every act which 
was conformable to reason, his evenness in all things, 
his piety, the serenity of his countenance, his sweetness, 
his disregard of empty fame, and his efforts to under¬ 


and tender 
gratitude to all 
his teachers, 
friends, and 
kinsmen who 
had helped 
to form his 
character. 


14 7 “ 18 o • Marcus A ureiius A ntoninus. 


119 

stand things duly; how he would let nothing pass with¬ 
out having first most carefully examined it and clearly 
understood it; how he bore with those who blamed him 
unjustly without blaming them in return; how he did 
nothing in a hurry; how he listened not to calumnies, 
and how exact an examiner of manners and actions he 
was; not given to reproach people, nor timid, nor sus¬ 
picious, nor a sophist; how he bore with freedom of 
speech in those who opposed his judgments ; the pleasure 
that he had when any man showed him anything better; 
and how religious he was, without superstition. Imitate 
all this, that in thy last hour thou mavest have as good 
a conscience as he had.” 

He speaks too in later years with thankfulness of his 
aged guardian’s care, which would not trust him to the 
risks and uncertainties of the public schools, but grudged 
no outlay on his education, supplying him with the best 
teachers of the day at home. 

As he passes in memory over the long list of these, 
he does not care to dwell upon the order of his studies, 
or how much he learnt from each of them of the stores 
of art and learning, but he tries rather to remember in 
each case what was or might have been the moral im¬ 
press on his character from the examples of their lives 

His governor, he says, gave him a distaste for the pas¬ 
sionate excitement of the circus or the gladiators’ fights, 

taught him to “ endure labour, and want 

, , . . , . , j , . Medit. 1. 5-17- 

little; to work with his own hands, and not 

to meddle with the affairs of others, or listen readily to 

slander.” Diognetus turned his thoughts from the trifles 

to the realities of life, introduced him to philosophy, and 

made him feel the value of ascetic training, of the coarse 

dress and the hard pallet bed. Fronto meantime was 

leading him to note “ what envy and duplicity and 


120 The Age of ihe Antonines. a.d. 

hypocrisy are in a tyrant, and how commonly the nobles 
of the day are wanting in parental love.” From Severus 
he learnt to admire the great men of the past—Thrasea, 
Helvidius, Cato, Brutus; “ and from him I received the 
idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, 
a. polity administered -with regard to equal rights and 
freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government.” 
Rusticus, who did him the good service of introducing 
him to the mind of Epictetus as expressed in the memoirs 
of his pupils, led him to see the vanity of sophistic emu¬ 
lation and display. In the example of “ Apollonius he saw 
that the same man can be most resolute and yielding 
he had before his eyes a teacher who regarded his skill 
and experience in instruction as the smallest of his 
merits; and from him he learnt “ how to receive from 
friends what are thought favors, without being either 
humbled by them or letting them pass unnoticed.” In 
Sextus he saw the beauty of a genial courtesy, and “had 
the example of a family governed in a fatherly manner, 
and of living conformably to nature, and gravity without 
affectation. He had the power of accommodating him¬ 
self readily to all, so that intercourse with him was more 
agreeable than any flattery ; and at the same time he 
was most highly venerated by those who associated with 
him.” 

Alexander the grammarian never used “to chjde those 
who uttered any barbarous or strange-sounding phrase ; 
but dexterously introduced the very expression which 
ought to have been used, in the way of answer or assent, 
or joining in enquiry about the thing itself, and not about 
the word.” In Maximus he saw unvarying cheerfulness, 
“ and a just admixture of sweetness and of dignity in 
the moral character. He was beneficent, ready to for¬ 
give, free from falsehood, and presented the appearance 


14 7 ~ 1 8o. Marcus Aurelius A ntoninus. 


I 21 


of a man who could not be diverted from the right, 
rather than of one who had been improved.” Finally, 
after the long survey of all the influences of earlier days, 
he thanks the powers of heaven for all “ their gifts and 
inspirations,” which tended to make the path of duty 
easy, “though I still fall short of it through my own 
fault, and from not observing the admonitions, or I may 
almost say, the direct instructions of the gods.” 

Few who have read the remaining Atcditations can 
think that M. Aurelius is here numbering complacently 
his own good qualities of heart and temper, or throwing 
a decent cloak over his praises of himself. There is a 
danger doubtless that the habit of constant 
introspection may lead to vanity, or at least 
to a morbid persistency of self-centred 
thought which may be fatal to the simple 
naturalness of healthy action. But in this 
case at least there are no traces of such in¬ 
fluence. The candour of his early youth seems reflected in 
the utterances of later years. He has a lively 
horror of deceit and affectation, would have 
his soul be “ simple and single and naked, more mani¬ 
fest than the body which surrounds it,” so 
that the character may be written on the 
forehead as “ true affection reads everything in the eyes 
of those it loves.” 

He wonders “ how it is that every man loves himself 
more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on 
his own opinion of himself than on the judg¬ 
ment of the world. If a god or a wise teach¬ 
er should present himself to a man, and bid him think 
of nothing and design nothing which he would not ex¬ 
press as soon as he conceived it, he could not bear it 
even for a single day. So much more respect have we 


There is no 
morbid vanity 
or self-love in 
such oblique 
reference to 
his own 
qualities. 


xi. 15. 


xn. 4. 


122 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


and no 
undue self¬ 
contempt 
or pessi¬ 
mism. 


to what our neighbours shall think of us than to what we 
shall think of our own selves.” 

There is yet another danger, which is very real, when 
earnest thought broods intently upon moral action, and 
dissects its motives and its aims. It often ends 
in seeing mainly what is mean and selfish, in 
having eyes only for the baser side of human 
nature, in becoming fretful and suspicious, 
or in feeding aft intellectual pride by stripping off what 
seem the mere disguises of hypocrisy and fashion, and 
pointing to the cankerworm of selfishness in all the 
flowers and fruits of social life. Do we find anything in 
these Meditations which may point to such painfulness 
of self-contempt, or to any impatient scorn of the petti¬ 
ness and vices of the men and women whom he knew ? 

A pure and noble nature such as his could not but be 
keenly sensitive to evil, and he does not shrink from 
speaking of it often. “ Begin the morning by 
saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy¬ 
body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unso¬ 
cial,” but he goes on to find a motive for 
wa^often* patience and forbearance. He was often 
sick and weary, it would seem, of social 
troubles and of uncongenial work. “ Men 
seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea¬ 
shores and mountains ; and thou too art wont to desire 
such things very much. ... It is in thy power 
whenever thou shalt choose to retire into 
thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more 
freedom from troubles does a man retire than into his 
own soul. Constantly then give thyself this retreat, and 
renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fun¬ 
damental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, 
will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to 


ii. 1. 


iv. 3 


147- 1 8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


123 


Vll. 70. 


send thee back free from all discontent with the things 
to which thou returnest.” He would find rest and com¬ 
fort in a larger, more hopeful view of things. “ There 
are briers in the road—turn aside from 
them. Do not add, And why were such 
things made in the world? For thou wilt be ridiculed 
by a man who is acquainted with nature, as thou wouldst 
be by a carpenter or a shoemaker if thou ^ ^ 
didst find fault because in his workshop tried to be 
there were to be seen shavings and cuttings P atient 
from the things which he was making.” He exhorts 
himself to imitate the patience of the powers of heaven. 
“ The gods who are immortal are not vexed 
because during so long a time they must 
tolerate continually men such as they are, and so many 
of them bad; and besides this, they also take care of 
them in all ways. But thou, who art destined to end so 
soon, art thou weary of enduring the bad, and this too 
when thou art one of them ?” But above all he would 
aim at cheerfulness in the thoughts of what is good and 
x noble. “ When thou wishest to delight thy¬ 
self, think of the virtues of those who live 
with thee; for instance, the activity of one, 
and the modesty of another, and the liberality of a 
third, and some other good quality of a fourth. For 
nothing delights so much as the examples of the virtues, 
when they are set before us in the morals of those who 
live with us.” 

But M. Aurelius felt the cares of state 
too deeply to indulge himself in the listless 
contemplation which might unnerve him for 
the work of life. He bids himself " not to 
be a man of many words, or busy about 
many things,” but to act like “a Roman 


vi. 48 . 

and cheerful. 


He would 
not indulge 
himself in 
listless con¬ 
templation, 
but re¬ 
member the 
hard work 
of life. 


1 24 


The Age of the Antonines. 


A.D. 


m. 5. 


v. 1. 


and a ruler, who has taken his post like a 
man waitin'! for the signal which summons 
him from life.” Or again : “ In the morn¬ 
ing when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be 
present. I am rising to a man’s work. Why then am 
I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I 
exist, and for which I was brought into the world ? Or 
have I been made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and 
keep myself warm ? Those who love their several arts 
exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and 
without food. But are the acts which concern society 
more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labour?” 

Again: “ Reverence the gods and help 
men. Take care that thou art not made 
into a Caesar/’ And to throw light upon his meaning, we 
may read the strong words which are poured out so 
abruptly : “ A black character; a womanish 
character; a stubborn character; bestial, 
childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudu¬ 
lent, tyrannical!” 

In the iulness of time philosophy was seated in his 
person on the throne, but he was too wise to entertain 
heroic aims and hopes of moulding human 
nature like the potter’s clay. “ How worth¬ 
less are all these poor people who are en¬ 
gaged in politics, and, as they think, are 
playing the philosopher! . . . Do not expect 
Plato’s Republic, but be content if the least thing goes 
well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. 
For who can change men’s opinions; and without a 
change of opinion what else is there than the slavery of 
men who groan while they are pretending to obey? 
Draw me not aside to insolence and pride. Simple and 
modest is the work of philosophy.” How modest was 


iv. 28. 


ix. 29. 

He was not 
too ambitious 
or too hopeful 
in his aims, 


i47 -I So. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus . 


125 


its aim, how far from all utopian fancies of the use of 
force, we may gather from another passage : 

“ What will the most violent man do to thee xi ‘ l8 ‘ 
if thou art still kindly towards him, and if, as opportunity 
occurs, thou gently admonishest him and calmly cor- 
rectest his errors at the very time when he is trying to do 
thee harm, saying, Not so, my child ; we are made by 
Nature for something else t I shall certainly not be 
harmed, but thou art injuring thyself? Show him by 
gentle tact and by general principles that this is s*>, and 
that even bees do not as he does, nor any animals of 
social nature. This thou must do affectionately and 
without any rancour in thy soul; and not as if thou wert 
lecturing him, nor yet that any bystander may admire .'* 
“ The kingdom of heaven cometh not with observa¬ 
tion.” Not by the strong hand of the master of thirty 
legions, nor by the voice of the imperial lawgiver, but by 
the softer influence of loving hearts like his, was the 
spirit of a nobler manhood to be spread on earth. For 
when he speaks, as he often does, of charity, , r „ . 
his words are not the old commonplaces of tender charity 
the schools, but tender phrases full of deli- tion^of 1C ' Pa " 
cate refinement and enthusiastic ardour, filing 311 
such as no work of heathendom can vie 
with, such as need but little change of words to bring 
before us the most characteristic graces of the Gospel 
standard. “ Think of thyself not as a part 
merely of the world, but as a member of 
the human body, else thou dost not yet love men from thy 
heart; to do good does not delight thee for its own sake; 
thou doest it still barely as a thing of propriety, and not 
yet as doing good to thine own self.” What is this but 
the well-known thought, “ If one member suffer, all the 
members suffer with it ?” 


VII. 13- 


126 


The Age of the Antonines . 


A.D. 


v. 6. 


“ As a dog when he has tracked the game, as a bee 
when he has made the honey, so a man when he has 
done a good act does not call out for others 
to come and see, but goes on to another act 
as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season. 
Must a man then be one of these, who in a manner act 
thus without observing it? Yes.’’ Here we seem to 
hear the precept, “ Let not thy left hand know what thy 
right hand doeth.” 

Agaki, on the duty of forgiveness : “ When a man has 
done thee any wrong, immediately consider with what 
opinion about good or evil he has done 
wrong. For when thou hast seen this thou 
wilt pity him, and wilt neither wonder nor be angry. It 
is thy duty then to pardon him.” Translate this into 
Christian language, and we have the words, “ Forgive 
them, for they know not what they do.” Or 
again : “ Suppose that men kill thee, curse 
thee. . . If a man should stand by a pure spring and 
curse it, the spring never ceases sending up wholesome 
water; and if he should cast clay into it or filth, it will 
speedily disperse them, and wash them out, and will not 
be at all polluted.” Surely this is a variation on the 
theme, “ Bless them that curse you and despitefully use 
you.” 

It was the ardour of this charity which kept from ex¬ 
travagance cr bitterness his sense of the pettiness of 
all the transitory interests of earth. For he 
often has his mystic moods in which he feels 
that he is only a stranger and a pilgrim 
journeying awhile amid vain and unsubstan¬ 
tial shows. “ Consider the times of Vespa¬ 
sian. Thou wilt see all these things ; peo¬ 
ple marrying, bringing up children, sick, dying, war- 


but refrained 
from extrava¬ 
gance or bit¬ 
terness in all 
his sense of 
the unreality 
of earthly 
good; 


I 47 ~ i 8 °- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 127 

ring, feasting, trafficking, flattering, suspecting, plotting, 
.... heaping up treasure, grumbling about 
the present. Well then, the life of these 
people is no more. Pass on again to the times of Tra¬ 
jan. Again all is the same. Their life too is gone. So 
view also the other epochs of time and of whole nations, 
- and see how many after great efforts fell, and were re¬ 
solved into the elements.For all things soon pass 

away and become a mere tale, and complete oblivion 
soon buries them .... What then is that about which 
we ought to employ our serious pains ? This one thing; 
just thoughts and social acts, and words which never lie, 
and temper which accepts gladly all that happens.” 

Or as he writes elsewhere, in a still sadder vein, but 
with the same moral as before: *' Soon, very soon, thou 
wilt be ashes, or a skeleton, and either a name 

v. 33* 

or not even that; . . . . the things which 
are much prized in life are empty and rotten, and tri¬ 
fling, and like little dogs biting one another, and lit¬ 
tle children quarrelling, laughing, and then straightway 
weeping. But fidelity and modesty and justice and truth 
are fled 

Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth. 

What then is there which still detains thee here ? . . . . 
To have good repute amidst such a world as this is an 
empty thing. Why then dost thou not wait in tranquil¬ 
lity for thy end, whether it be extinction or removal to 
another state ? And until that time comes, what is suf¬ 
ficient? Why, what else than to venerate the gods and 
bless them, and to do good to men, and to practise toler¬ 
ance and self-restraint.” He wearies of his books, of 
the life of courts, of dreams of glory and the conquer¬ 
or’s ambition, of the blindness and waywardness of men. 


128 


The Age of the Antotiines . 


A.D. 


“ For this is the only thing, if there be any, 

IX o 4 

which could draw us the contrary way, and 
attach us to life, to be permitted to live with those who 
have the same principles as ourselves. But now thou 
seest how great is the trouble arising from the discord¬ 
ance of those who live together, so that thou mayst say, 
Come quick, O death, lest perchance I too should forget 
myself.” 

“ Vanity of vanities 1 all here is vanity,” he seems to 
say, “save reverence and charity and self-restraint 

but true to his Stoic creed, he still clings 
totheThought fi rrr dy to the thought that there is a Ruling 
Providence 2 Providence and Perfect Wisdom, which is 
guiding all things for the best, although its 
judgments may be unsearchable and its ways past find¬ 
ing out. 


which stirred 
his heart with 
tenderness 
and love 

Universe. 

iv. 23. 


It is the peculiar feature of his character that this re¬ 
ligious optimism has the power not only to content his 
reason, but to stir his heart, and fill it at 
times to overflowing with a gush of tender¬ 
ness and love. ” Everything harmonises 
with me which is harmonious to thee, O 
Nothing is too early nor too late for me which 
is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to 
me which thy seasons bring, O Nature; from 
thee are all things; in thee are all things; to thee all things 
return. The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt thou 
not say, Dear city of Zeus?” Or again: 
“ What is it to me to live in a universe de¬ 
void of gods ? . . . But in truth they do exist, and they 
do care for human things, and they have put all the 
means in man’s power to enable him not to fall into real 
evil.” 

It moves his heart With gratitude to think' that the 


147 _1 8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 


129 


Vlll. 34. 


and delicate 
sympathy 
with Nature, 


111. 2. 


sinner has a place given him for repentance, and may 
come back from his moral isolation. “ Suppose that thou 
hast detached thyself from the natural unity, 
yet here there is this beautiful provision, 
that it thy power again to unite thyself. God has 
allowed this to no other part, after it has been cut asun¬ 
der, to come together again. But consider the kindness 
by which He has distinguished man, for He has put it 
in his power not to be parted at all from the universal, 
and when he has been parted, He has allowed him to 
return and to resume his place.” 

This reverent tenderness of feeling and delicate sym¬ 
pathy with Nature made him find a certain loveliness in 
things which had no beauty to the ancient 
world. “ Even the things which follow after 
those of natural growth contain something 
pleasing and attractive. . . Figs when they 
are quite ripe gape open ; and in the ripe 
olives the very circumstance of their being 
tenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit, 
corn bending down and the lion’s eyebrows, and the 
foam which flows from the mouths of wild boars, and 
many other things . . . consequent upon the things 
which are formed by nature, help to adorn them, and 
they please the mind ; so that if a man showed a feeling 
and a deeper insight . . . there is hardly one of those 
which follow by way of natural sequence which will 
not seem to him to be in a manner so disposed as to give 
pleasure.” There was something here beyond what he 
had learned from his old Stoic masters. They had 
taught him that the world was ruled by an Intellect Su¬ 
preme, with which it was man’s privilege, as it was his 
duty, to be in constant unison ; but their phrases were 
cold and hard and unimpassioned till they were trans¬ 
it 


near to rot- 
The ears of 




1 3 ° 


The Age of ihe Antonines. 


A.D. 


figured by his moods of tender fancy. They had shown 
their followers how to meet the ills of life with dignity 
and calm, and to face death with stern composure, if not 
with a parade of tragic pride, as if philosophy had robbed 
their last enemy of his fatal sting. But it is a^^ntler, 
humbler voice that cries, “ Pass through this 
1V * 48 ' little space of time conformably to nature, 

and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off 
when it is ripe, blessing Nature who produced k, and 
thanking the tree on which it grew.” 

Yet withal we are haunted by a certain melancholy 
which runs through all these Meditations, and as we read 
,. , , his earnest words we feel a ring of sadness 

not however sounding in our ears. For he had hopes 

certain and aspirations for which the Stoic creed 

melancholy CO uld find no place; and he sorely felt the 

problems which his reason could not solve. “ How can 
it be that the gods, after having arranged all things well 
and benevolently for mankind, have overlooked this 
alone, that some men, and very good men, 
and men who, as we mav say, have had 
most communion with the Deity, and through pious acts 
and religious observances have been most intimate with 
the Deity, when they have once died should never live 
again, but should be quite extinguished ?” He would 
fain hush to rest such yearning doubts, but the heart 
probably remained unconvinced by the poor logic which 
his reason had to offer. “ But if this is so, be assured 
that if it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would 
have done it. . . . But because it is not so, if in fact it 

is not so, be thou convinced that it ought not to have 
been so.” 

At times too there is something very sad in the con¬ 
fessions of his lonely isolation, for the air is keen and 


xiu 5. 


i47 _1 8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus . 


'3 1 


and sense 
of isolation. 


If they 

x. 15. 

dying, and 

x. 36. 


chilling on the heights to which he towered * 
by character as well as station. “ Live as 
on a mountain. . . . Let men see, let them 
know a real man who lives according to Nature 
cannot endure him, let them kill him. For 
that is better than to live thus.” Or again 
“Thou wilt consider this then when thou art 
thou wilt depart more contentedly by reflect¬ 
ing thus. I am going away from such a life, 
in which even my associates, in behalf of whom I have 
striven, prayed, and cared so much, themselves wish me to 
depart, hoping perchance to get some little advantage by 
it. Why then should a man cling to a longer stay here ?” 

From the imperfect sympathy of fellow-men he turned, 
as by natural instinct, to communion with the Eternal 
and Divine. But here again he found a sorry comfort 
in the system of his choice. The Universal Mind, the 
Abstract Godhead, or the Soul diffused 

The aus- 

through all creation and revealed by Na- terity of the 
, ... . , , , Stoic creed 

ture s myriad voices—these were cold and could not 
neutral phrases which might indeed con- contenthim - 
vince his reason, but could not animate or stir his heart. 
He could not therefore rest content to use them always 
in their austere nakedness, but must invest the cold ab¬ 
stractions with the form and colour of a personifying 
fancy, bringing thus before us on his pages the postu¬ 
lates of emotion rather than of logic. But meantime 
the poor artisans and freedmen of the Christian churches 
were praying to their Father in heaven with all the con¬ 
fidence of trustful childhood. The rabble of Thecon _ 
the streets were clamouring for their lives, trast of the 
and quickening the loyal zeal of many a porary 
Gallio on the seat of judgment; but they Christians. 

found comfort in the thought of One who called them 


1 3 2 


The Age of the Anfonines . 


A.D. 


friends and brothers, and who had gone before them on 
the road which they must travel, supported by the un¬ 
seen help of an Eternal Love. They laid their dead 
within the Catacombs, tracing on the rough hewn walls 
the symbol of the Cross or the form of the Good Shep¬ 
herd ; but they felt no dark misgivings and no inexpli¬ 
cable yearnings, and so were happier in their life and 
death than the philosophic Emperor of the proud Roman 
world, who speaks once only of the Christians, and then 
notices them as facing death with the composure of mere 
obstinate pride. 

It is sad to think that an Emperor so good was fol¬ 
lowed by a successor so unworthy ; sadder still that that 
successor was his son. Could not the philo¬ 
sophic ruler, Julian asked, rise above a 
father’s doting fondness, and find some one 
better fitted to replace him than a selfish 
stripling who was soon to prove himself a frantic tyrant 
with a gladiator’s tastes? He had a son-in-law beside 
him, Pompeianus, a soldier and a statesman of ripe age, 
or failing him there were all the worthiest of Rome to 
choose from, as he himself had been singled out in 
earlier years, and raised by adoption to the empire. He 
had himself served for many years of tutelage, under 
the eyes of Antoninus, to fit him for the responsibilities 
of absolute power ; was it wise to hope that an inexperi¬ 
enced youth, cradled in the purple, and exposed to the 
mean arts and flattery of servile spirits while his father 
was far away upon the Danube, would have the wisdom 
or the self-control to provide for the welfare of the sub¬ 
ject millions ? Roman gossips had an ugly story of the 
signs of cruelty which had shown themselves in Com- 
modus already; how in a fit of passion at a slave who 
had failed to heat his bath, he ordered him to be flung 


M. Aurelius 
was unfor¬ 
tunate in his 
successor, 
Com modus. 


I47 -i 8o. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 153 

into the furnace, but was tricked by the smell of frying 
sheepskin, which, thanks to an attendant’s happy thought, 
took the place of the poor bath man. True or false, the 
tale may serve to illustrate the current talk, and show 
how little men dared to hope that the father’s virtues 
would be continued in the son. 

Was M. Aurelius unfortunate in his wife as well as 
his successor? We must think him so indeed if we 
believe the common story, so confidently Washeals0 
repeated since, that she disgraced him by in his wife 
the profligate amours which were the talk of 
the whole town and the mark of scurrilous jests upon 
the stage ; that she intrigued with Cassius and urged 
him to revolt; and died by her own hand at last, in fear 
of imminent detection. 

Yet we have grave reasons to mistrust this picture of 
Faustina’s character, and the evidence on which it rests 
is very poor. The Emperor himself, in a striking pass¬ 
age of his memoirs, speaks of her in a very Reasons for 
different strain. When in the loneliness of doubting the 
the general’s tent beside the Danube, there the common 
rise before his thoughts the memories of the story- 
kinsmen, friends, and teachers who had guided him by 
their counsels or example, when he thanks the powers 
of heaven for all their goodness to him in 

IVIcd I 

the past, he does not fail to praise them for 
the blessing of a wife “ so obedient, so affectionate, and 
so simple.” The touching pictures of the Emperor’s 
home life in Fronto’s letters bring her to our fancy as the 
tender wife and loving mother. Her own recorded 
words, written in hot passion at the news of the revolt 
of Cassius, are full of affection towards her husband and 
cries of vengeance on the traitor, and data recently dis¬ 
covered in inscriptions in the Haur&n have disposed of 


134 


The Age of the Antonincs. 


a.d. 


the doubts as to their genuineness raised long ago by 
critics. In the countless medals struck in honour of her 
by the Emperor or Senate she appeared sometimes as 
the patroness of Female Modesty, sometimes as the 
power of Love and Beauty ; and flattery, however gross, 
would hardly have devised such questionable titles to 
provoke the flippant wit of Rome had such grave scan¬ 
dals been believed. 

We cannot doubt indeed that some years later there 
were stories much to her discredit floating through the 
streets of Rome. One writer of repute now lost to us 
is expressly charged with blackening her memory; 
another (Dion Cassius) raked up commonly into his 
pages so much of the dirt of calumny that we listen to 
his statements on the subject with reserve. The feeble 
writers of the Augustan history a century later repeat the 
stories, but avowedly as only current rumour, which they 
had not tested for themselves. But the Epitomists of 
later ages drop out the qualifying phrases altogether, and 
speak of her without misgiving or reserve as another 
Messalina on the throne, and later history has com¬ 
monly repeated the worthless verdict of these most un¬ 
critical of writers. If we hesitate to think that such grave 
charges could be altogether baseless, we may note that 
Faustina, in her pride of birth and fashion, had little 
liking for the sages whom her husband gathered round 
him, and outraged probably the scruples of these ascetic 
Puritans by her gay defiance of their tastes. But their 
displeasure may have carried a moral sanction with it, 
and lived on in literary circles, and influenced the tone 
of history itself. The rabble of the streets grew now 
and then impatient of the serene wisdom of their ruler, 
and when he was inattentive at the games, or tried to 
lessen the excitement of the gladiator’s bloody sport, 


CH. vi. The E?tipire and Christianity . 135 

they thought it a good jest to point to Faustina’s fashion¬ 
able pleasures, and to hint broadly that it was natural 
enough that she should look for sympathy elsewhere 
than to so august a philosopher and book-worm. When 
Commodus in later years unbared the vileness of his 
brutal nature, men might perhaps remember all this 
gossip of the past, and say that he could be no true son 
of the benign ruler whom they now regretted, thus fondly 
embalming the memory of the prince while sacrificing to 
it the honour of his wife. 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE ATTITUDE OF THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT 
TOWARDS THE CHRISTIANS. 

For a century or more the imperial government took 
little notice of the Christian church as the organized 
form of a distinct religion. It knew it chiefly . 

. 1 he Christians 

as a Jewish sect, as a fitting object for sus- were for 

picion or contempt, but not commonly tor regarded only 

active persecution. The race indeed with ^ct ^and Sh 

which they classed it was peculiarly distaste- remained 

. undisturbed; 

ful to the Roman rulers, as fanatical and 
unruly, and stirred at times by inexplicable moods of 
wild excitement. After the terrible struggle of a war 
almost of extermination they had risen in fierce revolt 
in Palestine, Cyprus, and Egypt; in all the great centres 
of industry and trade in which they spread, they gained 
a name for turbulence and strife and obstinate self-asser¬ 
tion. Yet for themselves at least their national worship 
was respected, for the policy of Rome found a place in 
its pantheon for the gods of all the countries of the 



CH. VI. 


136 The Age of the An to nines. 


for the Roman 
government 
tolerated all 
creeds which 
were not 
aggressive. 


Empire, and all might live together unmolested side by 
side. 

But when they tried to be aggressive, to make prose¬ 
lytes even in the streets of Rome, and to unsettle men’s 
traditional beliefs, the civil power stepped in to check 
and to chastise the disturbers of the public peace. It 
was thus that in the old days of the Republic senate and 
consuls oftentimes took measures to stay the progress of 
the eastern creeds when they claimed a 
right of settlement at Rome ; and the rulers 
of the early empire acted in like spirit as 
defenders of the national faith when it was 
menaced by what they thought the intoler¬ 
ant bigotry of the Jewish zealots. In the reign of Tibe¬ 
rius, for example, large numbers of such aliens, whose 
uncouth superstitions seemed to spread contagion round 
them, were flung into the island of Sardinia, to live or 
die, as it might happen, in the miasma of that pestilential 
climate. In the days of Claudius again we read of a 
disturbance among the Jewish immigrants, which grew 
to such a height as to be followed by a summary edict 
of general banishment from Rome. The strange words 
of Suetonius in which he speaks of the impulse given 
by a certain Chrestus to the tumult, “ impulsore Chresto 
tumultuantes, ’ point probably to the hot disputes and 
variance caused among the synagogues by the ferment 


of the new Christian teaching. The disturbance was 
soon quieted, and the peremptory order was withdrawn, 
or followed only by the departure of the leading spirits;' 
and the little Christian church lived for a time securely 
screened from notice and attack under the shelter of the 
legalized religion of the Jews, with which it was com¬ 
monly confused in the fancy alike of the people and 
of their rulers. But the story of Pomponia Graecina 


CH. VI. 


The Empire and Christianity. 


13 7 


serves to show that these exclusive creeds might not with 
impunity overleap the barriers of race and social class. 
A noble Roman lady was accused of tampering with new 
forms of superstition, according to the rule of ancient 
days, before a family council formed by her husband 
and her nearest kinsmen. After her acquittal we are told 
that she shunned the world of fashion, and lived for 
years a sober life of meditation. Ecclesiastical historians 
have commonly believed that they could read in the 
somewhat scornful language of the heathen writer a de¬ 
scription of the early type of Christian devotion. 

The story of the cruelties of Nero paints in far more 
lurid colours the growing hatred of the populace and the 
constant dangers of the infant church, which 
now, for the first time, clearly appears to 
view in the pages of the classical historians. we may.trace 

. . . . . - , distinct dislike 

1 he butchery and the tortures were indeed to the 
a mere freak of unscrupulous ferocity by as such, nS 
which the Emperor thought to divert men’s 
minds from the great fire which had made so many 
thousands homeless, or at least to discharge the lower¬ 
ing thunder-clouds of popular discontent upon the heads 
of the poor Christian artisans and freedmen. “They 
suffered,’’ says Tacitus, lt those votaries of a pernicious 
superstition, not indeed that they were guilty of the fire, 
but for their hatred of the human kind.’’ We may well 
ask ourselves the causes of the horror and repugnance 
here and elsewhere expressed so strongly, and which 
served as a convenient excuse for Nero’s wanton cruelty, 
guided possibly by the Jewish jealousy of his wife 
Poppaea. How could the gentle courtesies of the new 
morality inspire such feelings in the society which 
watched its growth ? 

The Jewish race was one which could not in those 


13 3 


The Age of the Antonines . 


CH. VI. 


due partly to 
their Jewish 
origin, 


though they 
forfeited their 
claims to the 
protection 
which the 
Jewish reli¬ 
gion enjoyed. 


days mingle peacefully with the peoples of 
the West. In Rome and Alexandria and 
others of the great cities of the ancient 
world there were frequent frays and tumults in the pop¬ 
ulous quarters where they flocked; their peculiar habits 
and dogged self-assertion stirred the antipathy of their 
heathen neighbours, who had no eyes for their industry 
and thrift and the nobler aspects of their moral character. 
But the Jews had at least an old and national religion, 
which might be borne with so long as its worshippers 
kept peacefully to theif own circles, while the Christians, 
though really, as it seemed, of the same 
race and customs, seemed to draw them¬ 
selves apart in still more obstinate isolation, 
to hold aloof even from their countrymen, 
and exhaust the patience of the world by 
meaningless disputes about the nice points 
of spiritual dogmas. Then let them do so at their cost. 
If they disowned their ancient worship, they must forfeit 
the legal sanction which had screened them hitherto. 

Again, in the personal bearing of the Christians there 
was much which unavoidably outraged the social senti¬ 
ments of others, for they could not easily 

They were . 

regarded also take part in the business or pleasures of a 
and morose world on which the stamp of idolatry was 
fanatics, set They must shun the pleasant gather¬ 

ings of their friends or neighbours, if they did not wish 
to compromise their principles or shock the feelings of 
the rest by their treatment of the venerable forms of 
heathendom. In the family observances at the chief 
epochs of a Roman’s life they could not be present to 
show their sympathy in joy or sorrow, for religious usages 
took place at each, and they dared not touch the unclean 
thing. At the recurring seasons of festivity they seemed 


ch. vi. The Empire and Christianity. 139 

unmoved amid the general gladness, for they could not 
worship at the altars, or join in the ceremonial pro¬ 
cessions, or hang their garlands on the statues of the 
gods. If they enlisted in the legions, they might be 
called upon to adore the Genius of the Emperor, or in 
case of their refusal be charged with rank disloyalty. 
No wonder if they held themselves aloof from public life, 
when at every turn they were confronted by the forms of 
a ritual which was accursed in their eyes. When their 
fellow-citizens kept holiday, they could not venture to the 
theatre without a shock to their sense of right and de¬ 
cency, while they turned with loathing from the ghastly 
horrors of the gladiatorial combats. They saw the dan¬ 
gers and they felt the force of the allurements to vice 
by which they were surrounded, and they turned away 
almost with despair from a world which seemed so wholly 
given over to the power of sensuality and sin. They 
had no eyes for the beauty of an art which was enlisted 
in the service of idolatry, nor for the symbolic value of 
the ancient forms which were one day to be hallowed 
for church use. Appealing to a higher standard than 
the will of Caesar or the laws of Rome, they could not 
accept the current estimates of men and manners, but 
looked often with a grave displeasure at what seemed 
innocent to other eyes. Hence men came to think of 
them as stern fanatics, shunning the pleasures and 
courtesies of social life, sectarians who would cut them¬ 
selves adrift from all the natural ties of country and of 
race. 

Nay more, they were branded even with impiety, be¬ 
cause they took no part in any recognised forms of wor¬ 
ship, but shrank from all the common usages 

• « «• • rp 1 1 • •, j and accused 

of national religion. I hose who visited of impiety, 

their homes found no little niche or shrine to 


i^o The Age of the Anionines. ch. vi. 

hold the figures of the guardian Lares; the oratory which 
perhaps took its place was empty as the temple at Jerusa¬ 
lem which had moved the wonder of the conqueror Pom- 
peius. From the first they had refused all adoration to a 
Caesar; still more emphatically they refused it after the 
cruelties of a Nero had coloured with their stains of blood 
the Apocalyptic visions of Antichrist and future j udgment. 

In addition to these charges there were others; wild 
delusions of distempered fancy, then, as in other ages, 
greedily caught up by the credulous and 
prejudiced masses. The simple love-feasts 
held at first in token of brotherhood and 
thankful memories were perverted into 
scenes of foul debauch; and the stories of accursed 
pledges, cemented by the blood of slaughtered infants— 
such as were told of old of Bacchanalian orgies or of the 
conspiracy of Catiline—passed once more from mouth 
to mouth, finding possibly some poor excuse in Eucha¬ 
ristic language misconstrued. They were often classed 
with the professors of magic and of necromancy, with 
the charlatans and quacks of every kind who haunted 
the low quarters of the town and preyed upon the igno¬ 
rant fancy of the vulgar. Yet amongthese the Christians 
often found their bitterest rivals, in the deceivers who 
feared to be unmasked, or to see the profits of their trade 
endangered. When once the suspicion and dislike of 
the populace were roused against them as impious mis¬ 
anthropes, the wildest stories were invented and believed 
to justify the hatred which was felt. If the Nile failed to 
overflow the fields in time of drought; if the plague 
spread its havoc through the towns ; if the harvest failed 
or earthquakes left their track of ruins; the Christians 
were the guilty wretches by whom the wrath of heaven 
was caused. In Northern Africa, we read, it was in later 


while foul 
stories were 
told and 
credited 
about them. 


CH. VI. 


The Empire and Christianity . 


141 


Nero 

reckoned on 
this popular 
antipathy, 


days a proverb, “If there is no rain, fix the blame upon 
the Christians.” 

In the ignorant antipathy of the lower orders lay the 
chief danger of the early church, and it was on this 
which Nero reckoned when he made it the 
scapegoat of the blind fury of the people. 

But his cruelty, frightful as it was, was per¬ 
sonal only, causing no change of legal status, 
an exceptional moment in a time of toleration. The 
Christian religion was not yet proscribed, and its pro¬ 
fessors had little cause to fear the Roman governors or 
judges, save when the people clamoured loudly for their 
blood. The reign of Domitian, indeed, is vaguely spoken 
of as one of persecution ; but there is little evidence of 
this in the annals of the time, though here and there 
noble Romans, like Clemens and Domitilla, may have 
suffered for lapsing from the creed of their fathers. 

But with the second century of the empire darker 
times set in in earnest, and a general ban was put at last 
by law upon the Christian church. We may 
find in Pliny’s letters the fullest notice of the 
change. As governor of Bithynia he wrote 
to Trajan from his province to tell him of 
the new religionists who were brought be¬ 
fore his seat of justice, and to ask for instructions how 
to deal with them. He had never had to do with them 
before, he said, nor ever sat in court when such cases 
were brought up. He was doubtful whether the name 
of Christian should be criminal in itself, or if it would be 


but 

Christianity 
was not 
made illegal 
till the time 
of Trajan. 


right to look only to the practice implied in the profes¬ 
sion. Information had been sent to him by unknown 
hands, and many had been denounced to him by name. 
On enquiry it appeared that while some denied the 
charge entirely, others admitted that they had been 


142 


The Age of the An to nines. 


CH. VI. 


drawn away, though they had ceased to be Chris¬ 
tians long ago. When sharply questioned as to the prac¬ 
tice and belief of the society to which they had belonged, 
they said its members used to meet from time to time at 
break of day, and sing their hymns of praise to Christ, 
and bind themselves by sacred pledges, not to any 
deed of darkness, but to keep themselves unstained by 
fraud, and falsehood, and adultery. There were stated 
gatherings besides, in which they joined each other in a 
simple meal, till all such forms of social brotherhood 
were put down by a special edict. To test the truth of 
such confessions, Pliny had two slave girls tortured, but 
nothing further was avowed by them nor by the rest who 
frankly owned that they were Christians, and would not 
recant or flinch even after repeated threats. 

Their unyielding obstinacy seemed to the writer of 
itself to call for punishment, though beyond that he 
could only find the traces of extravagant delusion. But 
he shrank from acting on his own discretion without in¬ 
structions from the Emperor himself, so grave were the 
interests at stake owing to the numbers of every age and 
sex and social grade whose lives and fortunes were 
involved. For the contagion, as he called it, had been 
spreading fast through towns and villages and lonely 
hamlets; the ancient temples had been almost deserted, 
and few were found to buy the offerings for the altars, 
till fear of punishment had lately quickened into life the 
forms of wonted reverence. 

Reasons may be urged indeed for doubting the genuine¬ 
ness of this letter, at least in the form in which we have 
Trajan’s ^ now; but we may at least accept the replv 
answer to 0 f Trajan, which was very brief and weighty. 

fheTaw! ned He W0l,ld ? ive no encouragement to official 
eagerness in hunting out charges of this 


ch. vi. The Empire and Christianity . 143 

kind; no anonymous evidence should be accepted ; any 
Christians should meet with pardon for the past if they 
would adore the national gods; but punishment must be 
enforced on all who stubbornly refused. This rescript 
formally decided the legal status of the new religion and 
the proceedings of the imperial agents. The Christian 
church could now no longer claim the protection which 
the synagogue enjoyed ; the forms and pledges of its 
union were illegal; any who would, might come forward 
to inform against them, and governor or judge might 
not pardon even if he wished. 

Indeed, even to enlightened rulers such as Trajan, 
who were not disposed to credit the gross calumnies of 
popular fancy, there was much that might seem danger¬ 
ous in the mysterious influence of the new religion. Its 
talk of equality and brotherhood might sound like the 
watchword of a social revolution, and the 
more so as its members were recruited 
chiefly from the toiling millions. The ties 
of sympathy between its scattered mem¬ 
bers were like the network of a widespread 
conspiracy, whose designs might be political, though 
masked under religious names. Its'meetings, often held 
at night, were an offence against the legal maxim that 
no new clubs must be formed or organized without the 
sanction of the civil power ; the refusal of its members 
to comply with a few time-honoured forms, or to swear 
even by the Emperor’s Genius, seemed like the disloyal 
wish to break wholly with the past and to parade a 
cynical contempt for the established powers. The obsti¬ 
nate unwillingness to bow even to the will of Caesar, 
and the claim to be guided by a higher law, had an un¬ 
welcome sound in the ears of absolute power. Some too 
there were, no doubt, who pushed their courageous pro- 


The reasons 
why the 
government 
might natu¬ 
rally distrust 
the church. 


144 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VI. 


test to the extreme of discourteous defiance, in their sensi¬ 
tive fear of dallying with the forms of idol worship, like 
the soldier who refused to appear before his general 
with the laurel garland on his head, and whose scruples 
called out a treatise of Tertullian in their defence; or 
who else vaunted openly their indifference to death in 
their impatient longing for the martyr’s crown. It was 
probably of such as these that Marcus Aurelius was 
thinking when he penned his single reference to the 
Christians, saying that the soul should be ready at any 
moment to be parted from the body, not from mere obsti¬ 
nacy as with them, but co7isiderately and with dignity, 
without tragic show. 

During the whole period before us there was little 
change in the attitude of the central power. The justice 
of Trajan, the refined curiosity of Hadrian, the humanity 
and gentle wisdom of the Antonines, seemed alike 
insensible to the goodness and the grandeur of the 
Christian morality, and alike indisposed to sanction the 
new influence which was spreading through the heathen 
world. Its speedy progress might well seem alarming 
to the defenders of the established order. It has been 
thought indeed that Pliny’s letter must have been tam¬ 
pered with in early times, since the numbers of the Chris¬ 
tians are insisted cn so strongly by a writer who con¬ 
fesses that beforehand he knew nothing of their tenets. 
Yet the churchmen of that age proudly point to the 
striking signs of onward movement. “There is no spot 
upon the earth,” says Justin, “even among barbarous 
peoples, where the name of the Crucified Redeemer is 
not heard in prayer.” Irenaeus thinks that the church 
is spread through the whole universe, and Tertullian in 
the lively phrases of his rhetoric urges, “We are but of 
yesterday, and we already fill your empire, your cities. 



CH. VI. 


The Empire and Christianity. 


145 


your town councils, your camps, your palace, and your 
forum ; we leave you only your temples to yourselves. 
Without recourse to arms, we might do battle with you 
simply by the protest of our separation ; you would be 
frightened at your isolation.” And the oldest of the Cata¬ 
combs of Rome has seemed to competent observers to 
point in the forms of its symbolic art to the number of 
the churchmen who, even in that early age, laid their 
dead within these obscure labyrinths of stone. 

This rapid spread of the young churches, exaggerated 
as it probably has been, was a real element of danger. 
Not that the Emperors had any persecuting zeal, or any 
wish to hunt the poor victims down. But the clamours 
of the populace grew louder, and the provincial gover¬ 
nors were often called on to enforce the law without ap¬ 
peal to any higher courts. Some looked on with indif¬ 
ference from the seat of justice while the crowd of igno¬ 
ble criminals passed before them, marvelling only at the 
conscientious scruples which declined to sprinkle a few 
grains of incense on the altars. Others were glad to 
court the favour of the people over whom they ruled by the 
sacrifice of a few stiff-necked zealots, fearing also to hear 
the cry, “ If thou lettest this man go, thou art not Caesar’s 
friend.” 

So we have the striking fact, that on the one hand, 
after Trajan’s rescript, the lowering clouds 
seem to be ever gathering more blackly, and ^Emperors 
the explosions of popular fury grow more feline 
frequent; on the other, each of the Empe- the popular 
rors is represented in church history as more intense, 
doing something to shield the Christians 
from attack or to temper the austerity of j ustice. Thus we 
have the letter sent by Hadrian to the governor of Asia 
Minor, in which he comments strongly on the disorderly 

L 


146 


The Age of the Antonines. 


ch. vr. 


The rescripts 
of Hadrian 
and Antoni¬ 
nus very 
questionable. 

as follows 


attacks upon the Christians, such as might encourage the 
malice and extortionate claims of false accusers. Only- 
indictments in strict legal form should be accepted; 
none should be arrested on vague rumour, and none 
convicted, save of acting contrary to law. This would 
amount to virtual toleration, unless taken in connection 
with the rule prescribed by Trajan which made it penal 
to refuse to adore the gods of Rome. But even as thus 
qualified, it would be a boon to the oppressed, as it 
might tend to check the greed of the informers, and 
strengthen the hands of an impartial judge. 

But the letter itself is not beyond suspicion, though 
far more credible than one which purports to 
be written by one or other of the Antonines. 
to a general assembly of the deputies of Asia. 
The message, briefly stated, runs somewhat 
“ I hold that the gods may be safely left to 
vindicate their honour on the heads of those who spurn 
them. The Christians prefer to die rather than be faith¬ 
less to the power they worship, and they triumph in the 
contest, for they are true to their own principles. Their 
neighbours in their panic fear of natural portents and 
disasters neglect to pray and offer to their gods, while 
they persecute the Christians who alone show real re¬ 
ligion. Provincial governors often wrote to my sainted 
father on this subject, and were told not to meddle with 
the Christians unless they were guilty of treason to the 
state. I too would follow the same course of action, and 
have informers warned that they will be liable to penal¬ 
ties themselves if they bring vexatious charges of the 
sort.” An imperial mandate couched in such strong 
terms would certainly have screened the Christians from 
attack and have marked an epoch in the history of the 
church, and as such have been constantly appealed to 


CH. VI. 


The Empire and Christianity. 


M 7 


in the law courts as also in the writings of Apologists. 
But it is probable enough that something was done to 
check the violence of popular feeling or the malice of 
informers, and that we have the traces of such action, 
coloured in after days by grateful feeling, or overstated 
* from the fancy that princes so large hearted and humane 
must have been in sympathy with the noblest move¬ 
ments of their times. 

Yet, sad to say, to the reign of the philosophic Em¬ 
peror belongs many a page of the long chronicle of 
martyrdom, and stories are given us at length of the 
sufferings of confessors whom the good ruler was either 
powerless or indifferent to % save. One of the earliest of 
such records may be found in a letter of the Th 
church of Smyrna which describes the last tyrdoTof 
days of the venerable Polycarp. The pas- Euseb^Hist. 
sion of the populace had broken out against EccL iv - IS - 
the Christians, and after witnessing the death of meaner 
victims, they began to clamour “ Away with the Athe¬ 
ists!” “Let Polycarp be sought.” The aged bishop 
wished to stay in the city at his post of duty, but his 
friends urged him to withdraw and shun the storm. He 
was tracked, however, from one house in the country to 
another, till at length he would fly no further, but waited 
in his hiding-place for his pursuers, saying only “ God’s 
will be done.” As they returned with him to the city 
they were met by the chief officer of the police, who 
took up Polycarp into his carriage, and spoke to him with 
kindness, asking what harm there could be in calling 
Caesar lord, and in offering sacrifice to save his life. 
Polycarp at first made no reply, but at last said. “ I will 
not do what you advise me.” Threats and violence 
were of no avail with him, and he went on his way 
calmly to the governor’s presence, though a deafening 


148 The Age of the Antonines. ch. vi. 

din was made by the assembled multitude. The pro- 
consul urged him to swear by the Genius of Caesar, and 
to say “ Away with the Atheists!” like the rest. The 
old man looked gravely at the crowd with a sigh and 
with uplifted eyes, then said, pointing to them with his 
finger, “ Away with the Atheists !” The governor urged 
him further. "Swear; curse Christ and I release thee.” 
" Eighty and six years,” he answered, "have I served 
him, and he has never done me harm, and how can I 
blaspheme the king who saved me ?” When still pressed, 
he said, " If you wish to know what I am, I tell you 
frankly that I am a Christian; if you would hear an 
account of Christianity, appoint a day and hear me.” 
The governor, who was no fanatic, and would have 
gladly saved him, asked him to persuade the people, but 
he refused to defend himself before them. The threats 
of the wild beasts and of the stake were all of no avail, 
and at last it was proclaimed " Polycarp has confessed 
himself a Christian.” Then all the multitude of Gentiles 
and of Jews who dwelt at Smyrna yelled out in furious 
clamour, “ This is the teacher of impiety, the father of 
the Christians, the enemy of our gods, who teaches so 
many to turn away from worship and from sacrifice.” 
And they cried with one accord that Polycarp must be 
burned alive. We need not dwell longer on the story of 
his martyrdom, the outline of which seems genuine 
enough, though there are features of it which were added 
probably by the fancy of a later age. 

A few years afterwards another storm of persecution 
raged in Gaul, at Vienna and Lugdunum (Lyons), the 
The perse- record of which is given us at full in a letter 
Vienna a lnd from the suffering churches to their brethren 

Eufeb. n v. m i. ° f Asia Minor * The various parts of the 
chief actors in the scene are stated in it with 


ch. vi. The Empire and Christianity. 149 

unusual clearness, and some extracts may serve to illus¬ 
trate the temper of the social forces of the time. The 
Christians of the neighbourhood had been long exposed 
to insult and outrage in all public places; but at length 
the excitement grew to such a height that a furious mob 
began to pillage their houses and to drag the inmates off 
to trial. As they openly avowed their faith before the 
magistrates and people, they were shut up in prison for 
a time until the arrival of the Roman governor. As soon 
as they were brought before him he showed a spirit of 
ferocious enmity, resorted even to the torture to wring 
confession from the accused, and admitted, contrary to 
legal usage, the evidence of heathen slaves against their 
masters, till fear and malice caused them to be accused 
of “ Thyestean banquets and CEdipodean incest.” No 
age nor sex was spared meantime. Pothinus, the aged 
bishop of Lugdunum, was roughly dragged before his 
judge, and asked who was the Christians’ God. He an¬ 
swered only, “ If thou art worthy, thou shalt know.” For 
this he was set upon and buffeted, and cast into a dun¬ 
geon, where after two days his feeble body breathed its 
last. Blandina, a weak woman, was racked from morn 
till night, till the baffled gaolers grew weary of their horrid 
work, and were astonished that she was living still. But 
she recovered strength in the midst of her confession, 
and her cry, “ I am a Christian, and there is no evil 
done among us,” brought her refreshment in all the 
sufferings inflicted on her. As some of the accused were 
Roman citizens, proceedings were delayed till appeal 
could be directly made to Caesar, and his will about the 
prisoners could be known. At length the imperial an¬ 
swer came, that those who recanted should be set free, 
but that all who persisted in their creed must die. Mean¬ 
time many who had denied already, but were still kept 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VI. 


I 5° 


in bonds, were encouraged by the ardour of the true 
champions of the faith, and came forward to the gover¬ 
nor’s judgment seat to make a good confession, and to 
be sent by him, such as were citizens of Rome, to be 
beheaded, and all the rest to the wild beasts. Some, 
indeed, who had “no marriage garment” gave way to 
their fears; but the rest, “like noble athletes, endured 
divers contests, and gained great victories, and received 
the crown of incorruption.” Last of all Blandina was 
again brought in along with Ponticus, a boy of about 
fifteen years of age. “ These two had been taken daily 
to the - amphitheatre to see the tortures which the rest 
endured, and force was used to make them swear by the 
idols of the heathen ; but as they still were firm and 
constant, the multitude was furious against them, and 
neither pitied the boy’s tender years, nor respected the 
woman’s sex. They inflicted on them every torture, but 
failed to make them invoke their gods; for Ponticus, 
encouraged by his sister, after enduring nobly every 
kind of agony, gave up the ghost, while the blest Blan¬ 
dina, last of all, after having like a noble mother in¬ 
spirited her children, trod the sam£ path of conflict which 
her children trod before her, hastening on to them with 
joy at her departure, not as one thrown to the wild 
beasts, but as one invited to a marriage supper; . . . the 
heathens themselves acknowledging that never among 
them did woman endure so many and so fearful 
tortures.’’ 

We cannot read without emotion the story of these 
heroic martyrs; but it has, besides, this special interest 
for us, that it shows the persecution taking its rise, as 
usual, in the blind fury of the people, and encouraged 
also by local magistrates, provincial governors, and 
either by Marcus Aurelius himself, or by his representa- 


CH. VI. 


The Empire and Christianity . 151 

tives at Rome, if the prince was too busy with the 
Marcomannic war. Yet for none of these can the excuse 
of ignorance be fairly pleaded. For Christianity had 
been long before the world; there was no mystery or 
concealment of its creed; its most distinctive features 
were confessed in the pages even of its hostile critics, 
and for some years past Apologists had been busy in 
doing battle with the prejudices of the people, and ap¬ 
pealing to the enlightened judgment of the Caesars. 

Thus even the mocking Lucian, in a single page of his 

satiric medley, reflects the noble unworldliness of the 

young church, its enthusiastic hopes of a life 
, , - . . . (. Lucian’s 

beyond the grave, its generous spirit of sym- account of 

pathy and brotherhood, with the longing to proteus nUS 

have all things in common, which made it reflects 

0 ... some noble 

easily the dupe of sanctimonious impostors, features of the 
He describes the life of such a clever rogue, carly Lhurch- 
under the name of Peregrinus Proteus, who after many 
a fraudulent device professed himself a convert, and 
soon rose to high repute among the Christians by his 
plausible eloquence and seeming zeal. From his 
energy he was singled out for persecution, thus winning 
admiration from the brethren as a confessor and a saint. 
While he was in prison they spared no trouble or expense 
to gain his freedom, and, failing in this, they were care¬ 
ful to provide for all his wants. From the dawn of day, 
old women, widows, and orphans might be seen standing 
at the prison doors; the chief members of the sect, 
having bribed the keepers, slept near him in the dungeon. 
They brought him all kinds of good cheer, and read the 
books of Scripture in his presence. Even from cities in 
Asia Minor came deputies from Christian societies to 
offer comfort and to plead his cause. . . “ For nothing,” 
says Lucian, “can exceed their eagerness in like cases, 


3 5 2 


7 he Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VI. 


or their readiness to give away all they have. Poor 
wretches ! they fancy that they are immortal, and so 
they make light of tortures, and give themselves up 
willingly to death. Their first lawgiver has also caused 
them to believe that all of them are brothers. Renoun¬ 
cing, therefore, the gods of Greece, and adoring the 
Crucified Sophist whose laws they follow, they are care¬ 
less of the goods of life and have them all in common, 
so entire is their faith in what he told them.” 

About the same time, probably, Celsus the philosopher 
devoted all his acuteness and his wit to an elaborate 
attack upon the Christian creed, and proved that he had 
made himself acquainted with the letter 
of^Cdsus 1 * 3ts doctrines, though he had not the ear¬ 

nestness of heart to appreciate its spirit. 
His work is only known to us in the reply of Origen, but 
in the course of the objections urged and met, we have 
brought before us the chief aspects of the new morality. 
Thus, when he makes the Christians say, “ Let no edu¬ 
cated or wise man draw near, but whoever is ignorant, 
whoever is like a child, let him come and be comforted,” 
he only states in taunting form the well-known paradox 
of the Gospel teaching; but in his protest at such igno¬ 
rant faith he does not stay to ask how a religion which 
disowned, as he thought, appeal to reason, could give 


birth to the many heresies and varying sects on which 
he lays elsewhere such stress as a weak point in the 
Christian system. Again, though only as a hostile critic, 
he bears witness to its promises of peace and grace to 
the sinful and despairing conscience. “ They,” he says, 
u who bid us be initiated into the mysteries of other 
creeds begin by proclaiming, ‘ Let him draw near who 
is unstained and pure, who is conscious of no guilt, who 
has lived a good and upright life.’ But let us hear the 


ch. vi. The Empire and Christianity. 153 

invitation of these Christians. ‘ Whoever is a sinner,’ 
they cry, ‘ whoever is foolish or unlettered, in a word, 
whoever is wretched, him will the kingdom of God 
receive.’ ” With this we may connect his comment on 
the subject of conversion: “ It is clear that no one 
can quite change a person to whom sin has become a 
second nature, even by punishment, and far less then by 
mercy ; for to bring about an entire change of nature is 
the hardest of all things.” Celsus knew the chief points 
of the story of the life and character of Christ, but was 
unaffected by its moral grandeur. He had heard of hu¬ 
mility as a marked feature of the Christian spirit, but it 
seemed to him a morbid growth, a perversion of the 
philosopher’s ideal. He was familiar with the teaching 
of God’s Providence, and of His fatherly care for every 
soul of man; but he thought it all a vain presumption, 
and the talk about the dignity of human nature and pos¬ 
sibility of its redemption sounded but as idle and un¬ 
meaning words to one who was content with the idea of 
a Great Universe, evolving through unchanging laws an 
endless round of inevitable results. 

In the next century Christianity found champions who 
were ready to meet such attack on its own ground, and 
to furbish for their use the weapons drawn 
from the armory of philosophic schools. 

But the Apologists of that age had other 
work to do. Accused as they had been as 
atheists, misanthropes, magicians, and sen¬ 
sualists of the worst type, the pressing need 
for them was to rebut such wanton slander, 
and to appeal to the imperial justice from the calumnies 
of ignorant malice. They were not like divines engaged 
on treatises of theological lore ; but, writing face to face 
with the thought of speedy death, they turned to meet 


answered 
in later 
days; the 
Apologists 
of this age 
had to deal 
more with 
practice 
than doc¬ 
trine. 


*54 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VI. 


the danger of the moment, and dwelt on practice as well 
as on belief. In answer to the coarse falsehoods which 
were spread about their secret meetings, they described 
at length their doings in their Sunday gatherings—how 
they met to read the memoirs of the Apostles and the 
writings of the Prophets. “ Then, when the reader 
ceases, the president exhorts to copy these 
Apo'm 67 good things. Then we rise -up all together 
and offer prayers, and when we cease from 
prayer, bread is brought, and wine, and water, and the 
president offers prayers in like manner, and thanksgiv¬ 
ings, and the people add aloud ‘ Amen,’ and the sharing 
of those things for which thanks have been given takes 
place to everyone, and they are sent to those who are 
not present. Those who have means and goodwill give 
what they like, and the sum collected is laid up with the 
president, who in person helps orphans and widows, and 
all who are in need, and those who are in bonds, and 
those who have come from a strange land, and, in one 
word, he is guardian to all who are in need.” 

They were spoken of as evil-doers, and possibly so- 
called Christians might have been such—Gnostics, or 
heretics of questionable creeds—but if so, urged the 
writers, they could be no true followers of Him whose 
recorded words they quote, and whose influ- 

argumenc ° f ence m tlle P ast the y P°i nt to as leading the 
hearts of men from hatred to love, from 
vice to virtue. Unsocial and morose they were not, 
though they must needs shun the forms of idol-worship 
and the gross offerings so unworthy of God’s spiritual 
being. Magicians certainly they were not, and it was an 
idle taunt to say that the miracles of their Master were 
the mere works of magic art, for prophecy had long ago 
foretold them by the mouth of the holy men of God on 


CH. vi. The Empire and Christianity. 155 

\ 

whom a large measure of the Divine Spirit must have 
rested. That Spirit or Eternal Logos was incarnate in its 
fulness only in Christ Jesus, though shared in some degree 
by the good men of heathen days, like Socrates or Plato. 
But the Greek sages were not able to persuade anyone 
to die for his belief, whereas their Master was obeyed 
by poor ignorant artisans and slaves, who proved the 
purity of their religious life by the manly courage of 
their death as martyrs. Great, however, as was their 
devotion to their heavenly Master, they had no lack of 
loyalty to Caesar, for the kingdom to which Christ 
pointed was no earthly kingdom of material power; but 
their hopes and fears of a life beyond the grave were 
the surest sanctions of morality, and such wholesome 
restraints on evil-doers all wise governors must welcome. 
These were the main topics of the earliest Apologies, 
interspersed at times, now with attacks upon the heathen 
legends which sanctioned the very vices with which 
Christianity was falsely charged, and now with warnings 
against the malignant action of the demons who had by 
the allurements of idolatry seduced men from the wor¬ 
ship of the living God, and who still made their potent 
influence felt in the outrages of persecution or the snares 
of heretical deceivers. 

We know little but the names of any of the writers of 
this class before the time of Justin Martyr, and his story 
is mainly given us in his works, if we except of 

the record of his martyrdom. Though born Justin 
in a city of Samaria, he came seemingly Martyr - 
of Gentile parents, and his attention was only drawn to 
Christianity when he saw how the believers 
could face the pains of death. “ For I my- J us ^ n ’ Ap - 
self,’’ he writes, “while an admirer of Pla¬ 
tonic thought, heard the Christians spoken evil of; but 


156 The Age of the Antonines. ch. vn. 

when I saw them fearless in regard to death, and to all 
else that men think terrible, I began to see that they could 
not possibly be wicked sensualists. For what man who is 
licentious or incontinent would welcome death with the 
certainty of losing all that he enjoys ? Would he not 
rather try to live on as before, and to shun the notice of 
the rulers, instead of giving information against himself 
which must lead to his death?” He had passed from 
one system to another of the ancient schools of thought, 
seeking from each sage in turn to learn the lessons 
of a noble life; but only when he heard of Christian 
truth was the fire lighted in his soul, and he knew that 
the object of his search was in his grasp, for the true 
philosophy was found at last. He tried to pass it on to 
other men, wearing as before the wandering scholar’s 
mantle, and talked with men of every race about the 
questions of the faith. 

His Apologies were addressed by him to the Anto¬ 
nines by name, with what effect we may best judge 
from the fact that he closed his missionary life by a 
martyr’s death while Marcus Aurelius was on the 
throne ; and we have reason to believe that his sentence 
was pronounced by Rusticus the Praefect, who owed his 
place of office to the monarch’s gratitude for earlier 
lessons of morality. 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STATE-RELIGION AND 
OF THE RITES IMPORTED FROM THE EAST. 

After studying the progress and the dangers of the 
Christian church we may naturally ask what was the 
character of the national religion which it tended to dis- 



Forms of Worship Sanctioned by the State. 157 


place. An old inscription tells us that a vote of thanks 
was passed by the Roman Senate in honour of Antoninus 
Pius for his scrupulous care for all the ceremonial obser¬ 
vances of public life. There was indeed no 
special reason why the Emperors of this age Emperors 
should be attached to the old forms of Roman respected 
worship. The families from which they formsof 
sprung had been long resident in foreign national 
lands; by taste or from necessity they 
passed much of their time far from the imperial city; 
their culture and the language even of their deepest 
thought was often Greek, and they had few ties of senti¬ 
ment to bind them to the rites of purely Italic growth. 
But it had been part of the policy of Augustus to begin 
a sort of conservative reform in faith and morals, and to 
lead men to reverence more earnestly the religion of 
their fathers. His successors, wanton and dissolute 
as they often were, professed at least the same desire, 
and expressed it often in enduring shapes and costly 
ceremonials. The Emperors of the second century 
observed with more consistent care the same tradition, 
carried it even somewhat to extremes, as when they 
stamped upon their medals the legendary fancies of an 
early age, and linked the old poetic fictions to the asso¬ 
ciations of imperial rule; just as the literary fashion of 
their times tried to express its complexities of thought 
and feeling in the archaic rudeness of an ancient style. 

The old religion of Italic growth was a very artless 
Nature worship, whose deities, with uncouth names, were 
cold abstractions of the reason, personified as yet by no 
poetic fancy. They were the sexless and mysterious 
agencies which presided over the processes of husband¬ 
ry, the powers of stream and forest, and the sanctities of 
the domestic hearth After a time, indeed, the exotic 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VII. 


153 


among the 
most dis¬ 
tinctive of 
which were 
the customs 
of the 
collegia or 
priesthoods, 


growth of Hellenism overlaid the simple forms, which 
tended perhaps to disappear from the language and 
thought of educated men, but lingered on in country 
life, surviving even at the last the ruin of their more at 
tractive rival. Among the earliest and most 
distinctive of the usages of natural religion 
were the observances of the collegia or con¬ 
fraternities which served as organized forms 
of an established worship. These priest¬ 
hoods were still recruited seemingly with 
the same care as heretofore. The oldest families of 
Rome were represented in the Salii, among whom a fu¬ 
ture Emperor, as we have seen, was entered at an early 
age, and took pride in mastering the niceties of tradi¬ 
tional practice ; at the Lupercalia the half-naked priests 
still ran along the streets of Rome, using the time- 
honoured words and symbols; and the Arval Brothers 
went through their ceremonial round with formularies 
which had been unchanged for ages. 

The last of these dated certainly from immemorial 
antiquity, for the foundation legend of the city enrolled 
the twins of Rhea in the then existing bro • 

o 


therhood. During the whole period of the 
Republic its prayers and offerings continued 
to express the hopes and fears of rural life, 
though history has passed it by with little notice. Even 
in imperial days, when liberal schemes of re-endowment, 
due probably to the policy of Augustus, had raised it in 
the social scale, we should know scarcely anything of 
the customs of its members if we were left only to the 
common literary sources. But a lucky accident has 
saved for us unusual stores of evidence. Year by year 
it was the practice to have careful minutes taken of 
their meetings and of all official acts, and to commit 


such as 
that of the 
Arval 
Brothers, 






Forms of Worship Sanctioned by the State. 159 


them, not to frail materials or the custody of 

their own president, but to monumental cha- the official 

r registers of 

racters engraved upon the walls of the tern- which still 
pie where they met. Their holy place was 
not in Rome itself, but in a quiet grove five miles away, 
which in the course of ages has become a vineyard, 
while a humble cottage has replaced the shrine. Some 
of the stone slabs which lined the walls have been 
worked into the masonry of other buildings, till the let¬ 
ters graven on them have caught here or there some 
curious eyes. One such, of special value, containing the 
oldest form of an Italian liturgy, was found a century 
ago in a chapel of St. Peter’s. Only a few years ago the 
Institute of Archaeology at Rome resolved to explore the 
field in which the temple stood in search of further evi¬ 
dence. The scattered fragments of the stones were 
pieced together, and a long series of priestly archives, 
reaching from the days of Augustus to those of Gordian, 
reappeared at length as from the tomb. 

The accounts of the stated meetings and of many 
occasional gatherings are given with surprising fulness 
of detail, and by their help we gain an in¬ 
sight quite unique into much of the symbo- fheir^ritual 
lie ritual and characteristic worship of the 
Romans. Brothers in name, and twelve in 
number, to correspond to the twelve lunar months in 
which the round of agricultural labour is completed, 
they were at first the spokesmen of the Latin husband¬ 
men who offered prayer and thanksgiving for the pros¬ 
pects of a fruitful season ; but in later days the noblest 
families of Rome were proud to figure on the list of a 
religious guild which reckoned at times an Emperor or 

its high-priest. . . 

It? greatest festival came at the end of May, when the 


CH. VII. 


160 The Age of the Antonines. 

first-fruits of the earth were gathered, and a blessing 
asked upon the works of coming harvest, 
especially Three days the holy season lasted. The first 
festival, gr " at and third were kept at Rome, but the second 
F»t?Araf. ta must be s P ent amon g the scenes of rural life 
and the brooding sanctities of Nature. At 
early dawn the president passed out of the city walls to 
the Tetrastylum or Guildhall, enclosed in its four lines 
of colonnade. Robing himself here in his dress of state 
with purple stripe, he went at once to the entrance of 
the sacred grove, where he offered swine on one altar 
and a white heifer on a second, to appease the sylvan 
deities whose mysterious peace was to be that day dis¬ 
turbed. While the victims were roasting on the flames, 
the other priests were all assembling, and each in turn 
must enter his name on the official register; which done, 
they laid their robes aside and breakfasted upon the 
viands which were now ready on the altars. The hours 
that followed were given to repose in the cool shade, 
but at mid-day another service must begin. Robed in 
the dress of state, with ears of corn wreathed round their 
heads, they paced in ceremonial procession through the 
grove up to the central shrine where the lamb was 
offered on the altar. The wine and meal were sprinkled 
on the ground, the clouds of incense filled the air, and 
the jars of antique form which held the bruised meal of 
earlier days were exposed to reverent adoration in the 
shrine. Once more they issued from the doors, with 
censers in their hands, and offerings to the treasury, and 
libations poured from silver cups. Two priests were 
then despatched to gather the first-fruits from left to right 
through the whole company, and back again. Then 
with closed doors they touched the jars of meal, and 
murmured over each the solemn words of dedication, 


Forms of Worship Smotioned by the State. 161 

and brought them out to be flung at last down the hill¬ 
side before the temple. The priests rested for a while 
upon their marble seats, and took from their servants’ 
hands the rolls of bread bedecked with laurel leaves, 
and poured their unguents on the images around them. 
The laity must then withdraw; the doors were barred, 
while the priests girded their flowing dress about their 
loins, and took each his copy of the service books in 
which were written the old liturgies whose meaning no 
one present knew. The venerable chant was sung with 
the cadenced movements of the old Latin dance, and 
then the servants reappeared with garlands which were 
placed upon the statues of the gods. The solemn forms 
were at an end. The election of the president for another 
year was followed by the customary greetings (felicia), 
and the priests left the grove to rest in their own hall, 
and to dine in pomp after the labours of the day. The 
dinner over, they crowned themselves with roses and 
betook themselves with slippered feet to the amusements 
of the circus which were held close by, and closed the 
festival with a supper party in the high-priest’s house at 
Rome. 

In the proceedings of the Arval Brotherhood we may 
note three features which seem to character¬ 
ise the national religion of the Romans. 

(i) Its punctilious regard for ancient forms 
may be read in every line of those old ar¬ 
chives. The deity worshipped in that shrine 
was a nameless Dea Diet still, as in the days 
before Greek fancy made its way to Latium ; the primitive 
religious dance (tripodiatus) was scrupulously observed; 
the rude instruments of barbarous ages were still used, 
though else unknown; the words of the chant they had 
to sing were so archaic that they could not trust their 

M 


We may 
note in their 
proceedings, 
ist, their 
punctilious 
regard for 
ancient 
forms; 


162 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VII. 


memories without the book. The fear to employ any 
instruments of iron in the grove ; the changes of dress 
and posture and demeanour ; the careful entry in the 
registers of each stage in the long ceremonial service ; 
these are examples of a Pharisaic care for outward usages 
which may be often found elsewhere in the history of 
symbolism, but which in this case seem to have passed 
at last into a stately picture language which spoke noth¬ 
ing to the reason and little to the heart. 

(2) It had therefore little influence on man’s moral 
nature, and scarcely touched the temper of his character 
or the practice of his workday life. For the most part 
the deities whom they adored had each his toll of offering 
and due respect, but did not claim to guide 
the will or check the passions. Ceremonial 
obedience might serve to disarm their jeal¬ 
ousy or win their favour, and men need not 
look to any spiritual influence beyond. The priests had 
never been the social moralists of Rome ; preaching and 
catechizing were unheard of; and the highest function¬ 
aries of religion might be and sometimes were men of 
scandalous life and notorious unbelief. The history of 
the Arval Brotherhood may help to illustrate the general 
truth. In the lists recorded in its archives may be found 
the names of many of the most profligate worldlings of 
imperial times, but very few of good repute. Court 
favour gave a title to the priesthood. Its practical con¬ 
cern was the enjoyment of good cheer, and the inscrip¬ 
tions carefully record the sum which was allotted for 
each banquet by the state, and the drinking cup which 
was put for every guest. One list of the year 37 tells us 
that the Emperor Caligula presided on the day of the great 
festival, and though he was too late to be present at the 
sacrifice, still he was there at least in time for dinner. Of 


2nd, the 
absence of 
moral or 
spiritual 
influence; 


Forms of Worship Sa?ictioned by the State. 163 


the seven names which follow his, two were borne by 
noblemen of exceptionally immoral habits, a third is 
called by Tacitus of a self-indulgent nature, and not one 
displayed any great qualities in public life. Five out of 
the seven died a felon’s death, or to escape it laid violent 
hands upon themselves. 

(3) The Romans had their national worship, their 
church as established by the state. The priesthoods had 
been commonly faithful servants of the governing 
powers, and had never raised the cry of rights of con¬ 
science or of spiritual freedom. The Arval Brotherhood 
had certainly the temper of unquestioning rd thejr 
loyalty. We need not, indeed, lay special loyalty to 

, . r , , established 

stress upon the recurring usage of state pray- powers of 
ers in which they joined at every opening state> 
year together with the whole official world; but it is cun 
ous to turn over the archives of the eventful year 69, it 
which four Emperors followed each other on the throne, 
and in which the Brothers took the oath of fealty to each 
with equal readiness, meeting one day under the presi¬ 
dency of their prince, and five days afterwards hailing 
the murderer as his successor. Sometimes they met to 
commemorate events of national importance, as in the 
days of festival for Trajan’s Dacian victories. But be¬ 
sides this we have in the first century a whole series of 
days of thanksgiving and intercession connected chiefly 
with the fortunes of the imperial family, whose chiefs 
had been first patrons and then deities of the old guild. 
The Flavian dynasty and the Antonines were too sensible 
and modest to care much for such official flattery, and 
possibly they may have grudged the sums allotted to 
such a costly round of entertainments; so the meetings 
of the priests grew fewer, and the entries in the registers 
were rarer, save for the May festivals of early usage. 


164 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VII. 


The creed and ritual of ancient Rome were too cold 
and meagre and devoid of all emotional power to content 
the people’s hearts. The luxuriant creations of Hellenic 
fancy, the stirring excitements of the Eastern worships, 
gradually came in to fill the void, till at last 
all the religions of the world found a home 
in the imperial city. 

The Greek colonists who early pushed 
their way along the coasts of southern 
Italy handed on the legends and the rites of Greece, 
which even in the regal period gained, through the 
Sibylline books, a footing in the state which literary 
influences constantly increased. As Rome’s conquering 
arms were stretched forth to embrace the world, as 
strangers flocked to see the mistress of the nations, and 
slaves of every race were gathered within her walls, the 
names and attributes of foreign deities began to natura¬ 
lize themselves almost of right, and to spread insensibly 
from aliens to Romans. 

Polytheism has commonly a tolerant and elastic 
system. It seldom tries to impose its creed by force on 
other races, or to resist the worship of new 
gods as a dishonour to the old. Accustomed 
already to the thought of a multitude of 
unearthly powers, it has no scruple in 
adding to their number, and prefers to bor¬ 
row the guardians of other races rather than force them 
to accept its own. So as land after land was added to 
the Empire, protection and honour were accorded to the 
forms of local worship, and all the subject nations were 
allowed to adore the objects of their choice. If any of 
them left their homes, they clung, of course, to the old 
rites, and might enjoy them undisturbed at Rome. It 
was, however, quite another thing to let them pass be- 


and was 
supple¬ 
mented by 
exotic 
creeds and 
rites, 


The old re¬ 
ligion was 
too cold and 
meagre for 
men’s 
wants, 


Forms of Worship Sanctioned by the State. 165 

yond the bounds both of country and of race, and to 
give them the sanction of the state as a form of the 
established faith of Rome. Still more so when the latest 
comers, who claimed to set up their altars and their 
temples in the streets, shocked the old-fashioned scruples 
of the ruling statesmen by their extravagance or sensual 
licence, or when it seemed that secret societies were 
spreading through the people under the cover of reli¬ 
gious names. Then the government stepped 

° 0 which were 

in with force or menace, stamped out the only feebly 
Bacchanalia, for example, with terrible the civil by 
decision, and had the shrine of Isis levelled power ’ 
to the ground, though the consul’s hand had to strike 
the first blow with the axe when meaner arms were para¬ 
lysed with fear. Even after the days of the Republic, 
Augustus, who had shown honour to Serapis in his Egyp¬ 
tian home, forbade his worship on the soil of Italy. Yet 
these were only passing measures, ineffectual to stay the 
stream of innovation. On one pretext or another, the 
sanction of the state was given to the alien rites ; a war 
or a pestilence was at times enough to excuse an appeal 
to some new tutelary power, and even to cause invita¬ 
tions to be sent to distant gods. As the sense of the 
imperial unity grew stronger, the distinction between 
the religious life of the centre and the provinces seemed 
more arbitrary and unmeaning; and though many a 
moralist of antique spirit gravely disapproved of the tone 
and temper of the eastern creeds, yet the rulers gradually 
ceased to put any check upon their spread, so long as 
each was satisfied to take his place beside the rest with¬ 
out intolerant aggression or defiance of the civil power. 

There was, besides, another tendency which made it 
easier to enlarge the national Pantheon. Many a scru¬ 
ple was disarmed when men were told that the new- 


i66 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH VII. 


comers were only the old familiar powers disguised in a 
new shape. Comparison had shown the likeness some¬ 
times of usages and prayers in different lands, sometimes 
of the attributes assigned, or of the poetic fancies which 
had grown up in time round venerable names. Sincere 
believers felt a comfort in the thought that all the multi¬ 
tude of rival deities which seemed to have a claim on 
their respect consisted really of the many masks assumed 
by the same personal agencies, or were even 


wdcomed separate qualities of the One Heavenly 

mndTsuch Father. Plutarch, priest of the Pythian 

as Plutarch 


Father. 

Apollo and a devout adherent of the old 
religion of his fathers, yet wrote a treatise on the gods of 
Egypt in which he tried to prove that thqy were in truth 
only the gods of Greece, worshipped with mysterious 
rites and somewhat weird suggestions of the fancy, 
which, however, found a counterpart at home in the na¬ 
tive outgrowths of the Hellenic mind. The truth which 
the figurative language of their ritual shadowed forth 
was one expressed in many another symbol; the pow¬ 
ers of heaven were well content that men should read it, 
and would yield their secrets with a good grace to the 
earnest seeker. He felt, therefore, the more attracted to 
the mystic obscurity of that old culture of the Pharaohs, 
of which the Sphinxes were the aptest tokens, certain as 
he was that all its riddles might be read, and would yield 
an harmonious and eternal truth. 

Plutarch never doubted of the personal existence of 
the beings whom he adored, and never resolved them 
into mere abstractions. Others there were with piety no 
less real than his, who regarded all the forms of popular 
and Maxi- religion as useful in their various degrees, 

mus Tyrius, but as all alike adequate to express the 

Diss. vin. # 1 r 

truths which were ineffable. “ Doubtless,” 


IO. 


Forms of Worship Sanctioned by the State. 167 

says one of them, “God the Father and Creator 
of the Universe is more ancient than the sun or hea¬ 
vens, is greater than time, superior to all that abides 
and all that changes. Nameless He is, and far away 
out of our ken ; but as we cannot grasp in thought His 
being, we borrow the help of words, and names, and 
animals, and figures of gold and ivory; of plants and 
streams, and mountain heights and torrents. Yearning 
after Him, yet helpless to attain to Him, we attribute to 
Him all that is most excellent among us. So do the 
lovers who are fain to contemplate the image of the 
persons whom they love ; who fondly gaze at the lyre or 
dart which they have handled, or the chair on which 
they sat, or anything which helps to bring the dear one 
to their thoughts. Let us only have the thought of God. 
If the art of Phidias awakens this thought among the 
Greeks; if the worship of animals does the like for the 
Egyptians; if here a river and there the fire does the 
same, it matters little. I do not blame variety. Only 
let us know God and love Him; only let us keep His 
memory abiding in our hearts.” 

In place of thematter-of fact and ceremonious religion 
of the Latin farmers, we may trace in course of time new 
thoughts and feelings roused to play their part in a rich 
variety of spiritual moods. We may trace the mystic 
reveries and ecstatic visions such as those which convent 
life has often nursed in pious souls of later times, where 
the fancy, living overmuch in the world of the unseen, 
loses its sense of the reality and due proportions of the 
things of earth. We hear of sensitive and enthusiastic 
natures who see so clearly the special providence which 
broods over their lives, and feel so keenly love and 
gratitude for all the mercies given to them, that they 
speak of themselves as the elect predestined to the favour 


/ 


i68 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VII. 


of heaven. They feel the workings of God’s spirit in 
their hearts; they see in every turn of life the traces of 
His guiding hand, and airy visitants from other worlds 
look in upon them in their dreams. 

Such a one was the rhetorician Aristides, who, after 
suffering for long years from a malady which none could 
cure, devoted himself to the service of the god Asclepius 
(whom the Latins called Aesculapius), living mainly in 
his temple with his priests, seeing him in visions of the 
night, following implicitly the warnings sent in sleep, 
and falling into trances of unspeakable enjoyment. 

, . . , Proud of the privileges of his special revela- 

and Aristides, . * . 

who was full lation, he wrote out in impassioned style 

reverTes^nd his sacred sermons , published, as he said, 
visions. at dictation of his heavenly patron. He 

told the story of his ecstatic moods, of the promised 
recovery of strength which followed in due course, of the 
deliverance from instant danger vouchsafed to him at 
the great earthquake of Smyrna, of the comfort of 
the abiding presence of a saving Spirit, and his thank¬ 
fulness for the old trial of sickness which brought him 
to the notice of a protector so benign. 

Mystic aspirations point to the hope of a closer union 
with the Divine than the trammels of our common life 
allow. To rise above these limitations, to 
lose the sense of personal being, and al¬ 
most indeed of consciousness, in the pul¬ 
sations of a higher life—to this the enthusiasm of devo¬ 
tion points in many a different name and race. Most 
commonly, with this end in view, the soul would keep 
the body under and starve it with ascetic rigour, while 
the spirit beats against its prison bars, panting for a 
freer and purer air. Examples of such austerity of self- 
denial may be also found in heathen times; weary jour- 


New moods 
of ecstatic 
feeling, 


Forms of Worship Sanctioned by the State. 169 


neyings to holy places visited by countless 

... , , , 1 r i 1 self-denial, 

pilgrims, who must be meanly fed and 
hardly lodged if they would hope to gain the gladness 
of the beatific vision. Recluses too there were in Egypt, 
giving their lives without reserve to holy meditation, 
and hoping to draw nearer to their God by well nigh 
ceasing to be men. More frequently they had recourse 
to the influence of highwrought feeling, to the 

excitement 

electric sympathies by which strong waves 
of passion sweep across excited crowds, and carry them 
beside themselves in transports of enthusiasm. By the 
wild dance and maddening din, by fleshly horrors self' 
imposed, or the orgies of licentious pleasure, by vivid 
imagery to make the illusion of the fancy more com¬ 
plete, they worked upon the giddy brain and quivering 
nerves, till the excited votaries of Isis or Adonis passed 
beyond the narrow range of everyday life into the frenzy 
of religious ecstacy and awe. 

In the early Roman creed there was little room for 
the hopes or fears of a life to come. But there is a 
yearning in the mind to pierce the veil which hides the 
future from the sight, and many a prophecy was brought 
from other lands, couched in hopeful or in warning tones, 
here darkly hinted in enigmas, here loudly proclaimed 
in confidence outspoken, there acted in dramatic forms 
before the kindling fancy as in the ancient mysteries of 
Greece, or in more questionable shapes in the ritual of 
Eastern creeds. 

Another influence was brought to bear on Western 
thought in the deeper sense of sinfulness, as the pollu¬ 
tion of the guilty soul and an outrage on the 
majesty of God. With this came in natural gj 1 G om yStlC 
course the greater influence of the priests, 
to whom the stricken conscience turned in its bewilder- 


The Age of the An to nines. 


CH. VII. 


1 7 ° 

ment or its despair. For they alone could read with 
confidence the tokens of the will of heaven, they alone 
knew the forms of intercession or atonement which 
might bring peace by promises of pardon. No longer 
silent ministers engaged in the mere round of outward 
forms as servants of the state; they wan- 

are ' 

encouraged dered to and fro to spread the worship of 

religions of their patron saints, sometimes with the 

the East. fervour of devoted faith, sometimes work¬ 

ing on men’s hopes and fears to gain a readier sale for 
their indulgences and priestly charms, sometimes like 
sordid mountebanks and jugglers catering for the won¬ 
der-loving taste of credulous folks by sleight of hand 
and magic incantations. 

Among the most striking of such innovations due to 
the spread of Oriental symbolism was the costly rite of 
taurobolium , in which recourse was had to 
Th i striking the purifying influence of blood. Known to 

of the tauro- us chiefly by inscriptions, of which the ear¬ 

liest dates from the reign of Hadrian, we 
have reason to believe that the usage came from Asia as 
a solemn sacrifice in honour of the Phrygian Mother of 
the Gods. From Southern Italy it passed to Gaul, and 
in the busy town of Lugdunum (Lyons), the meeting- 
point of traders of all races, it was celebrated with more 
than common pomp. It was the more impressive from 
its rarity, for so great seemingly was the cost of the ar¬ 
rangements, that only the wealthy could defray it. Cor¬ 
porations, therefore, and town-councils came forward to 
undertake the burden, when dreams and oracles and 
priestly prophecies had expressed the sovereign pleasure 
of the goddess. Ceremonies on such a scale could be 
held only by the sanction of the ruling powers, and it 
would seem that an official character was given to the 


Forms of Worship Sanctioned by the State. 1 71 


rites by the presence of the magistrates in robes of state. 
The crowning act of a long round of solemn forms was 
the slaughter of the bull itself, from which the whole rite 
had drawn its name. The votary in whose behalf the 
offering was made descended with silken dress and 
crown of gold into a sort of fresh-dug grave, above 
which planks were spread to hold the bull and sacrificing 
priest. As the blow fell upon the' victim’s neck, the 
streams of blood which came pouring from the wound 
flowed through the chinks and fittings of the wood, and 
bathed the worshipper below. From the cleansing 
virtue of the blood, he became henceforth spiritually 
regenerate (in aeternum renatus), and at the time an 
object almost of adoration to the gazing crowds. We 
need not wonder that the writers of the early church 
indignantly opposed such heathen rites, which seemed 
to them a hideous caricature of the two great topics of 
their faith, Christian Baptism and Redemption. 

It would be too much to say perhaps that any of 
the thoughts and feelings naturalised in later days at 
Rome were wholly new and unfamiliar. In weaker 
moods, in rudimentary forms, they maybe traced in the 
religion of the earliest days, and so too even the outer 
forms of worship, the mystic rites and orgies had their 
counterparts in ancient Rome. Some scope 

^ ■ TTlic new- 

was given from the first to sacerdotal claim S, comers were 
some priestly functions had been claimed jjv^sidVby 
by women, which made it easier in later side,n . 

J ’ peace in the 

times for priests to gain ascendancy, and imperial 

, , ...... Pantheon. 

women to play so large a part in the religion 
of the Empire. But the Eastern influence gave inten¬ 
sity of life to what before was faint and unobtrusive. It 
vivified the unseen world which was vanishing away 
before the practical materialism of the Roman mind. It 


! y 2 The Age of the Antonines. CH. vi I. 

coloured and animated with emotional fervour the pale 
and rigid forms of social duties. It was the informing 
spirit which was new, and this could pass into any of the 
multitudinous creeds which now lived side by side in 
peace. They could and did compete for popular favour, 
without bitterness or rancour in their rivalry; and the 
priests of one deity could be votaries of another, be* 
lieving, as they often did, that the same Power was 
worshipped under different disguises of nationality and 
language. Each took its place within the imperial Pan¬ 
theon, without the hope or wish to displace others. Two 
systems only proudly stood aloof—the Jewish Synagogue, 
whose energies were centred in the work of explaining 
and commenting on its Sacred Books; the Christian 
church - which was turning from its fond hopes of the 
speedy fulfilment of its kingdom of heaven, to engage 
in a struggle of life and death, in which all the iron dis¬ 
cipline and social forces of the Empire stood arrayed 
against it, while it was armed only with the weapons of 
mutual kindliness and earnest faith and inextinguisha¬ 
ble hope. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE LITERARY CURRENTS OF THE AGE. 


The period of the Antonines abounded with libraries 
and schools and authors, with a reading public, and all 


The wide¬ 
spread 
enthusiasm 
for learning, 
but want of 
creative 
power. 


the outward tokens of an educated love of 
letters. Never has there been more enthu¬ 
siasm for high culture, more careful study 
of the graces of a literary style, more criti¬ 
cal acquaintance with good models, more 


interchange of sympathy between professors 



!73 


CH. VIII. The Literary Currents of the Age. 

of the diffeient schools; and yet there were but scanty 
Harvests fiom all this intellectual husbandry. There 
was no creative thought evolved, no monument of con¬ 
summate art was reared, no conquest of original research 
achieved. 

The scnbendi cacoethes, the mania for scribbling, 
poured forth vast quantities of literary matter; but most 
of it fell at once still-born, and much of what remains 
has little value for us now, save to illustrate the condi¬ 
tions of the times. The men are of more interest to us 
than their works. There was colour and variety in the 
features of their social status; there were curious analo¬ 
gies to the history of later days; but we are likely to 
gather from their writings rather a series of literary 
portraits, than ideas to enrich the thought and fancy, or 
models of art to guide our taste. 

The culture of the age was mainly Greek. Hellenic 
influence had spread long since far into the East. 
Among the populous towns of Asia Minor it 
ruled entirely without a rival; it had pushed Jfjhea^e^ 6 
its way through Syria, and almost to the line was mainly 
of the Euphrates; while it held many an 
outpost of civilized life in the colonies planted long ago 
among the ruder races of the North. Through all of 
these the liberal studies were diffused, and in their 
schools the language of Demosthenes was spoken with 
little loss of purity and grace. From them, as well as 
from Athens and her neighbours, came the instructors 
who taught the Western world ; from them came the new¬ 
est literary wares, and the ruling fashions of the season ; 
and even in countries such as Gaul, where Rome had 
stamped so forcibly the impress of her language and her 
manners, scholars who hoped for influence beyond a 
narrow local circle, often wrote and thought in Greek, as 


174 


The Age of the Antonities. 


CH. VIII. 


the speech of the whole civilized world. The old Ro¬ 
man tongue grew rapidly more feeble and less pure, 
with few exceptions the learned declined to write in it, 
and an Emperor, as we have seen, even in the memoirs 
written for no eye save his own, expressed his deepest 
thoughts and feelings not in Latin but in Greek. 

The career of a man of letters was chiefly professorial, 
and his works were meant more for the ear than for the 

eye. His sphere of action commonly was 
and pro- found in lectures, conferences, public read- 

fessorial. # 7 - 

ings, panegyrics, debates, and intellectual 
tournaments of every kind. For the scholars of those 
days were not content to stay at home and be prophets 
to their countrymen alone, or to trust to written works 
to spread their fame; but they travelled far away from 
land to land, and ever as they went they practised their 
ready wit and fluent tongue. Like their prototypes in 
earlier days, the rivals of Socrates and the objects of the 
scorn of Plato, they were known by the old name of So¬ 
phist, which implied their claim to be learned if not to be 
wise, and the term was used without reproach of the 
most famous of their number, whose lives were written 
by Philostratus. Citizens of the world, and self-styled 
professors in the widespread university of culture, they 
found full liberty of speech and an eager audience in 
every town. For though the times were changed many 
of the habits of the old Republic lingered still ; and 
though the stormy debates of politics were silenced, and 
the thunders of the orators of old were heard no more, 
still the art of public speech was passionately prized, and 
men were trained even from their childhood to studv the 

J 

grace and power of language, and to crave some novel 
form of intellectual stimulus. 

So when the travelling Sophist was heard of in their 


CH. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 175 

midst, the townsmen flocked with curious ears about the 

stranger, as the crowd gathered around Paul 

, TT . n . , 1, . The various 

upon Mars Hill, eager to hear and tell of classes of 

some new thing. Sometimes it was a scholar Sophlsts 
of renown who came with a long train of admirers, for 
young and old went far afield in search of knowledge, 
and attached themselves for years to a great teacher, 
like the students of the middle ages who passed in 
numbers from one famous university of Europe to 
another, attracted by the name of some great master. 
Then the news passed along the streets, and time and 
place were fixed for a lecture of display ; the magistrates 
came in state to do the speaker honour, and even an 
Emperor at times deigned to look in, and set the ex¬ 
ample of applause with his own hands. Sometimes a 
young aspirant came in quest of laurels, to challenge to 
a trial of skill the veteran whose art was thought by his 
countrymen to be beyond compare. Sometimes came 
one with all the enthusiasm of a new-found truth, to 
maintain some striking paradox, to advocate a moral 
system, or some fresh canon of literary taste. Like the 
great schoolmen of the age of Dante, or the Admirable 
Pico of a later time, they posted up the theses which 
they would hold against all comers, and were ready in 
their infinite presumption to discourse of all the universe 
of thought and being (de omni scibili et ente), and when 
weary of the sameness of the scholar’s life wandered 
like knights errant round the world in search of intel¬ 
lectual adventures. Sometimes it was a poor vagrant 
with a tattered mantle, who gathered a crowd around 
him in the streets, and declaimed with rude energy 
against the luxury and wantonness of the life of cities, 
bidding men look within them for the sources of true 
happiness and worthy manhood. Like the preaching 


7 he Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VIII. 


j 76 


friars of the Christian church, they appealed to every 
class without distinction, startling the careless by their 
examples of unworldliness, and striking them often on 
the chords of higher feeling, as they spoke to the rich 
and noble in the plain language of uncourtly warn¬ 
ing. Yet often the Cynic’s mantle was only a dis¬ 
guise for sturdy beggars, disgusting decent folks by 
their importunate demands, and dragging good names 
and high professions through the mire of sensuality and 


falling under 
the main di¬ 
visions of, i° 
moralists 
and philoso¬ 
phers. 


lust. 

The name of Sophist was applied in common speech 
to two great classes, which, rivals as they were for popu¬ 
lar esteem, and scornful as was each of the 
pretensions of the other, were yet alike in 
many of the features of their social life, and 
were scarcely distinguished from each other 
by the world. 

The first included the professional moralists and 
high thinkers, who claim to have a rule of active life 
or a theory of eternal truth which might be of infinite 
value to their fellow-men. Philosophy had somewhat 
changed its aims and methods since the great systems 
of original inquiry had parted the schools of Greece 
among them. The old names, indeed, of Platonist and 
Peripatetic, Epicurean and Stoic, still were heard ; but 
the boundary lines were growing fainter, and the doc¬ 
trines of each were losing the sharpness of their former 
outlines. Philosophy had lost the keenness of her dia¬ 
lectic, the vigour and boldness of her abstract reasoning; 
she had dropped her former subtlety, and was spending 
all her energy of thought and action on the great themes 
of social duty. She aspired, and not quite in vain, to be 
the great moral teacher of mankind. She stepped into 
the place which heathen religion long had left unfilled, 


ch. viii. The Literary Curren's of the Age. 177 

and claimed to be the directress of the consciences of 
men. When the old barriers were levelled to the 
ground; when natural law, and local usages,, and tra¬ 
ditional standards became effaced or passed away before 
the levelling action of the imperial unity ; when servile 
flattery began to abdicate the claims of manhood, and to 
acknowledge no source of law and rigljt but the caprices 
of an absolute monarch, philosophy alone began on 
sure foundations to raise the lines of moral order, philo¬ 
sophy alone was heard to plead in the name of dignity 
and honour. She left the shadow of the schools, the 
quiet groves of Academe, the Gardens, and the Porch, 
and came out into the press and throng of busy life 
under every variety of social guise. She furnished her 
lecturers of renown, holding chairs with endowments 
from the state, and speaking with the authority of men 
of science. She had her spiritual advisers for great 
houses, living like domestic chaplains in constant at¬ 
tendance on the wealthy and well-born. There were 
father confessors for the ruler’s ear, rivalling in influence 
the ladies of the imperial household. There were phy¬ 
sicians of the soul, who had their little social circles of 
which they were the oracles, guiding the actions of their 
friends, sometimes by confidential letters, sometimes by 
catechetical addresses, while at times their familiar table 
talk was gathered up for private use in the diaries of 
admiring pupils. Missionaries travelled in her name 
from town to town, with hardy courage and unvarnished 
phrase, like the Mendicant Friars of later days, speak¬ 
ing to the people mainly in the people’s tongue, and de¬ 
nouncing the lust of the eye and the pride of life in the 
spirit of Christian ascetics. 

The greatest among the heathen moralists of the age 

was Epictetus. The new bought slave, for that is the 

N 


1 7 8 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VIII. 


such as 
Epictetus, 


meaning of the only name by which history 
knows him, early exchanged his Phrygian 
home for the mansion of a Roman master, 
who seems to have been a vulgar soul, cringing to the 
powerful and haughty to the weak, and who treated him 
probably with little kindness, even if he did not, as one 
version of the story runs, break his slave’s leg in a* freak 
of wanton jest. Yet, strange as it may seem, his master 
sent the lame and sickly youth to hear the lessons of 
the most famous of the Stoic teachers, intending him, 
perhaps, for literary labour because he was too weak for 
other work. The pupil made good use of the chances 
offered him ; and when in after years he gained his free¬ 
dom, he ruled his life in all things by the system of his 
choice, proving in the midst of his patient, brave, and 
unobtrusive poverty how fully he had mastered all the 
doctrines of the Porch. No cell of Christian monk was 
ruder than his simple bedroom, of which the only fur¬ 
niture was a pallet bed and iron lamp, and when the 
latter was taken by a thief, it was replaced by one of clay. 

Epictetus wrote no works, and made no pretence in 
public as a sage; but he talked freely to his friends, and 
admirers gathered round him by degrees to hear his racy 
earnest sermons on one moral question or another, and 
some made notes of what he said, and passed them on 
in their own circles, till his fame at last spread far and 
wide beyond the range of personal acquaintance. Arrian, 
his devoted friend, has left us two such summaries; one 
a Manual of his Rule of Life, couched in brief and 
weighty words, as of a general to his soldiers under fire ; 
the second, a sort of Table Talk, which, flowing on with 
less dogmatic rigour, found tenderer and more genial 
tones to speak to the hearts of those who heard him. He 
eschewed all subtleties of metaphysics, all show of par- 


179 


CH. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 

adox or literary graces ; his thoughts are entirely trans¬ 
parent and sincere, expressed in the homeliest of prose, 
though varied new and then by bursts of rude eloquence 
and vivid figures of the fancy. In them the whole duty 
of man, according to the Stoic system, is put forth in the 
strongest and most consistent form ; and as such, they 
were for centuries the counsellors and guides of thou¬ 
sands of self-centred resolute natures. 

To bear and to forbear in season, to have a noble dis¬ 
regard for all the passing goods of fortune, and all which 
we cannot ourselves control; to gain an absolute mas¬ 
tery over will and temper, thought and feeling, which 
are wholly in our power—to make Reason sit enthroned 
within the citadel of Self, and let no fitful gusts of pas¬ 
sion, no mere brute instincts guide our action—these in 
bare outline are the dogmas of a creed which insists as 
few have ever done upon the strength and dignity of 
manhood. True, there are harsh words at times, full of 
a stern, ascetic rigour, as when he bids men not to grieve 
for the loss of friend, or wife, or child, and to let no 
foolish pity for the ills of any whom he loves cloud the 
serenity of the sage’s temper. Rebuking grief, he needs 
must banish love, for grief itself is only love which feels 
the lack of what is torn away, and without sympathy to 
stir us from our moods of lonely selfishness we should 
be merely animals of finer breed and subtler brain. 

But Epictetus could not trample out all feeling; he 
rises even to a height of lyric fervour when he speaks of 
the providence of God, of the moral beauty of His works, 
and the strange insensibility of ungrateful men. Nor 
would he have his hearers rest content with the selfish 
hope of saving their own souls ; rather, he would have 
them ever think of the human brotherhood, and live not 
for themselves but for the world. He falls into a vein of 


i8o 


The Age of ihe A ntonines. 


CH. VIII. 


Christian language when he speaks of the true philoso¬ 
pher as set apart by a special call, anointed with the 
unction of God’s grace to a missionary work of lifelong 
self-devotion, as the apostle of a high social creed. Un¬ 
consciously, perhaps, he holds up the mirror to himself 
in this description, and the rich colouring and impas¬ 
sioned fervour of the chapter redeem the austerity of 
his moral system. 

The substance of some passages may serve perhaps 
to complete the brief sketch of his character and thought. 

When asked to describe the nature of the 
ideal Cynic, he said that heaven’s wrath 
would light on him who intruded rashly into a ministry 
so holy. It called for an Agamemnon to lead a host to 
Troy ; none but Achilles could face Hector in the fight; 
if a Thersites had presumed to take that place, he would 
have been thrust away in mockery or disgrace. So let 
the would-be Cynic try himself, and count the cost before 
he starts for the campaign. To wear a threadbare cloak 
is not enough : something more is needed than to live 
hardly—to carry staff and wallet, and to be rude and un¬ 
mannerly Jo all whose life seems too luxurious or self- 
indulgent. It were an easy matter to do this. But to keep 
a patient, uncomplaining temper, to root out vain desire 
and rise above the weakness of anger, jealousy, pity, and 
every carnal appetite, to make the sense of honour take 
the place of all the screens or safeguards of door and 
inner chamber, to have no secrets to conceal, no shrink¬ 
ing fear of banishment or death, in the confidence of 
finding everywhere a home where sun and moon will 
shine, and communion will be possible with heaven — 
this is not an easy thing, but to be able to do this is to 
be a philosopher indeed. Thus'furnished for the work 
of life, the true Cynic will feel that he has a mission to 


ch. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 181 

be a preacher of the truth to erring men who know so 
little of what is really good or evil. He is sent as a seer 
to learn the path of safety, and as a prophet to warn his 
fellow-men of all their dangers. It is for him to tell 
them the secret of true happiness, that it does not lie in 
the comfort of the body, nor in wealth, nor high es¬ 
tate, nor office, nor in anything which lies exposed to 
the caprice of chance, but only in the things which fall 
within the range of man’s freewill, in his own domain of 
thought and action. 

Men ask indeed if any can be happy without the 
social blessings which they prize. It is for the apostle 
of philosophy to show that, homeless, childless, wifeless 
wanderer though he be, with only a mantle on his body 
and the sky above his head, he can yet enjoy entirest 
freedom from all anxiety and fear, and from all the 
misery of a fretful temper. But let no one rashly fancy 
that he is called to such a life without weighing well its 
duties and its dangers. Let him examine himself well, 
and learn the will of God whose messenger he would 
claim to be. Outraged and buffeted he may be, like a 
poor beast of burden ; but he must love his persecutors 
as his brethren. For him there can be no appeal to 
Caesar or to Caesar’s servants, for he looks only to his 
Sovereign in heaven, and must bear patiently the trials 
which He sends him. In a realm of perfect sages there 
would be no call into the mission-field, and all might 
innocently enjoy the pleasures of home life in peace. 
But that soldier serves most cheerfully who has no cares 
of wife or household, and the Cynic who has felt the call 
to do God’s work must forswear the blessings of the life 
of husband or of father, must rise above the narrower 
range of civic duties, remembering that all men are his 
brothers and his city is the world. 


i 82 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VIII. 


Yet large as is the call upon his self-denial, he should 
not aim at needless austerity or ascetic gloom. There is 
no sanctity in dirt or vermin, nothing to win souls or to 
attract the fancy in emaciated looks and a melancholy 
scowl; nor is there any reason why the missionary must 
be a beggar. Epictetus saw no merit in hardships self- 
imposed, nor would he have men turn from pleasure as 
from a traitor offering a kiss ; only he would have them 
able to part cheerfully with all save truth and honour, in 
the spirit of pilgrims on the march. “ As on 
a journey, when the ship is lying at anchor, 
thou mayest land to take in water, and gather shells 
and the like upon the shore, but must keep the vessel 
still in view, and when the steersman beckons, must 
leave all else at once to come on board: so, too, in life’s 
pilgrimage, if wifelet or little one be given thee for a 
while, it may be well, but to see to it that thou art ready, 
when the pilot calls, to go at once, and turn not to look 
back.” 

The life of Dion Chrysostom may serve to illustrate 
Still further the ideal of the philosophic propaganda of 
, these times. He was, indeed, no Stoic by 

and Dion 

Chrysos- profession, and did not use heroic tones ; 

yet like the sage pictured to our fancy in 
the strong words of Epictetus, he felt that he was called 
to spend his life unselfishly for others, and to preach and 
plead to every class in the enthusiasm of a religious 
duty. He only gradually awoke, indeed, to the sense of 
his vocation, and it is curious to read his own account of 
his conversion to philosophy, and note his confessions 
of unworthiness. 

Driven by a popular riot from his home at Prusa, in 
which town he had already filled the highest offices, he 
betook himself to Rome, where he gained a name by 


CH. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 183 

eloquence, and the hatred of Domitian by outspoken 
satire. He fled away and lived a wandering life, in the 
course of which, as we have seen already (p. 6), he 
appeased a mutiny among the legions when the news of 
the tyrant’s murder reached their camp upon the northern 
frontier. During those years of banishment he hid his 
name but could not hide his talents ; his threadbare 
cloak was taken for a Cynic’s mantle, and men often 
came to him to ask for counsel. His quibbles of rhetoric 
availed him little for cases of conscience such as these, 
and he was driven to meditate in earnest on great themes 
of duty, and seek for truth at the sources of a higher 
wisdom. With light so gained he saw the vanity of 
human wishes, he felt the littleness of his earlier aims, 
and resolved to devote his eloquence to a higher cause 
than that of personal ambition. He would spend himself 
for the needs of every class without distinction, and tend 
the anxious or despairing as the physician of their souls, 
regretting only that so few care for serious thought in 
the season of prosperity, and fly to the sage for ghostly 
counsel only when loss of friends or dear ones makes 
them feel the need of consolation. 

The details of his life and character are known to us 
chiefly by his works, some of which are moral essays, 
sermons, as it were, on special texts which might be 
preached to any audience alike, while others are set 
speeches made in public as occasion called him forth in 
many a far-off city where he sojourned in his wandering 
career. In the former class we note that among all the 
commonplaces of the schools, high thoughts may be met 
with here and there, full of a large humanity, and with 
an entirely modern sound. In a world whose social 
system rested on a basis of slave labour, he raised his 
voice not merely to plead for kindliness and mercy, but 


The Age of the Antonines . 


CH. VIII. 


184 


to dispute the moral right of slavery itself. Feeling deeply 
for the artisan and peasant, whose happiness was sacri¬ 
ficed, and whose social status was degraded by the 
haughty sentiment of Greece and Rome, he spoke in 
accents seldom heard before of the dignity and prospects 
of industrial labour. His account of the shipwrecked 
traveller in Euboea gives us a picture, else unequalled in 
its vividness, of the breach between the city and the 
country life, and of the uncared-for loneliness of much 
of the rural population. 

But the second class of writings best reflects the 
temper and activity of Dion’s efforts to bring philosophy 
to bear upon the world. They show him as the advo¬ 
cate of peace, stepping in with words of timely wisdom 
to allay the bitterness of long-standing feuds, or the 
outbreak of fresh jealousies such as had lingered for 
centuries among the little states of the ^Egean, and sur¬ 
vived even the tutelage of Roman power. At one time 
the subject of dispute is the scene of the provincial courts, 
at another the proud title of metropolis of Asia; at 
another some infinitely petty right of fisheries or of pas¬ 
ture. Quarrels such as these brought citizens of rival 
towns into collision in the streets, and led to interchange 
of passionate complaints, wearying out the patience of 
their Roman masters by the vanity and turbulence of 
these Greek republics. All Dion’s tact and all his 
eloquence were needed in such cases, to enforce the 
eternal principles of concord and forbearance by the 
dexterous use of personal appeals. He shows his sense 
of the importance of this work by speaking with a sort 
of fervour of the holy functions of this ministry of recon¬ 
ciliation. 

He was jealous of his dignity and independence, 
stooping to truckle neither to the violence of mob-licence 


ch. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age . 1S5 

nor to the caprices of a monarch. He startled the disso¬ 
lute populace of Alexandria by his bold defiance of their 
wanton humour, and by his skilful pleading to have the 
claims of philosophy respected. He bore himself with 
courteous firmness in the presence of the Court, and 
lectured Trajan on the duties of a royal station without 
any loss of honest frankness or imperial favour. He 
preached on the vanity of human glory, and was one 
day to prove in his own person how treacherous and 
unsubstantial a thing it is. The cities which had hon¬ 
ored him as their teacher and their friend were presently 
to grow weary of his counsels, and to show him the in¬ 
dignity of setting another head upon his statues. Prusa 
his birthplace, and the object of his special tenderness, 
was to turn against him in blind fury, and to denounce 
him to the Roman governor as a traitor and a thief. 

To the vicissitudes of the career of Dion we may find 
a striking contrast in the unbroken calm of Plutarch’s 
life. Descended from an ancient family of 
the Boeotian Chaeroneia, after drawing from 
the sources of ancient art and learning at their fountain 
head at Athens, he betook himself in riper years to 
Rome, where, besides attending to the duties with which 
he seems to have been charged in the service of his 
fellow-townsmen, he lectured publicly from time to time, 
and made good use of the literary stores amassed in the 
great libraries, and of the interchange of thought in the 
cultivated circles of the capital. In the vigour of his 
intellectual manhood he went back to Chaeroneia, where 
he lived henceforth, for fear, he says, that the little town 
should lose in him a single citizen ; serving with hon¬ 
ourable zeal in the whole round of civil and religious 
offices, and winning the respect of all his neighbours as 
well as of many correspondents from abroad. 


186 The Age of the Antonines. ch. vm. 

Full of the generous patriotism of the best days of 
Greece, he gave his time and thought without reserve 
to the service of his countrymen, though he allowed no 
glamour of ancient sentiment to cloud his judgment. 
He told the young aspirants round him that, when they 
read the harangues of Pericles and the story of their old 
republics, they must be careful to remember that those 
times were gone for ever, and that they must speak with 
bated breath in their assemblies, since the power had 
passed into the hands of an imperial governor. It was 
idle to be like the children at their play, who dress them¬ 
selves as grown-up folks, and put on their fathers’ robes 
of state. And yet the worthy citizen, he says, has no lack 
of opportunities for action. To keep open house, and so 
to be a harbour of refuge for the wanderers, to sympa¬ 
thise with joy and grief, to be careful not to wound 
men’s feelings by the wantonness of personal display; 
to give counsel freely to the unwary, to bring parted 
friends once more together, to encourage the efforts of 
the good and frustrate the villany of designing knaves, 
to study, in a word, the common weal, these are the 
duties which a citizen can discharge until his dying day, 
whether clothed or not with offices of state. 

For Plutarch did not write merely as a literary artist 
to amuse a studious leisure or revive the memory of 
heroic days, but as a moralist invested by public con¬ 
fidence with a sort of priesthood to direct the con¬ 
sciences of men. He had, indeed, no new theory of 
morals to maintain, and made no pretension to original 
research ; he wished not to dazzle but to edify, to touch 
the heart and guide the conduct rather than instruct 
the reason. His friends or neighbours come to him for 
counsel on one or other of life’s trials, and he sends 
them willingly the fruit of his study or reflection. He 


CH. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 187 

holds his conferences like a master of the schools, and 
the privileged guests flock willingly to hear the sermons 
of which the subject has already been announced, and 
listen with becoming gravity to the exhortations of the 
sage. Sometimes they are invited to propose a question 
for debate ; but nothing frivolous can be allowed, nor 
may any of the audience betray an unseemly lack of in¬ 
terest, “ like the bidden guest who scarcely touches 
with his lips the viands which his host has spread before 
him.” The listener’s mind must be ever on the alert, 
“ as the tennis player watches for the ball,” and he 
never should forget that he is sitting, not like a lounger 
at the theatre, but in a school of morals where he may 
learn to regulate his life. The lecture ended, or the 
public conference closed, the privileged few remain to 
discuss the subject further with their master, while here 
or there a stricken conscience stays behind to confess 
its secret grief and ask for ghostly admonition. But the 
teacher’s doors are ever open ; all may freely come and 
go who need encouragement or advice on any point of 
social duty. Out of such familiar intercourse, and the 
cases of conscience thus debated, grew the treatises of 
ethics which, read at Rome and Athens as well as in the 
little town of Chaeroneia, extended to the world of letters 
the fruits of his ministry of morals. 

He did not always wait to be applied to, but sought 
out at times the intimates who seemed to need his coun¬ 
sels, watched their conduct with affectionate concern, 
and pressed in with warning words amid the business of 
common life. He tried to recommend philosophy not 
by precept only but by practice, first testing on himself 
the value of his spiritual drugs, and working with hu¬ 
mility for the salvation of his soul. “ It was for the good 
of others,” he tells us, “that I first began to write the 


The Age of the A ntonines. 


CH. VIII. 


188 


biographies of famous men, but I have since taken to 
them for my own sake. Their story is to me a mirror, 
by the help of which I do my best to rule my life after the 
likeness of their virtues. I seem to enter into living com¬ 
munion with them; while bidding them welcome one by 
one under the shelter of my roof, I contemplate the 
beauty and the grandeur of the souls unbared before me 
in their actions.” 

Yet it was not without other reasons that he lingered 
over these old passages of history and romance. For, in¬ 
deed, with all his width of sympathy and his large hu¬ 
manity, the mind of Plutarch was cast in an antique 
mould. At home mainly in the world of books or in the 
social moods of a petty town of Greece, he knew little of 
the new ideas which were then leavening the masses. 
The Christian church, meantime, was setting the hearts 
of men aglow with the story of a noble life which could 
find no sort of parallel in his long list of ancient wor¬ 
thies. Dion Chrysostom had dared to call the right of 
slavery in question, and spoke as feelingly as any modern 
writer of the sorrows of the proletariate and the dignity 
of labour. Marcus Aurelius w r as soon to show what deli¬ 
cate humility and unselfish grace could blossom in the 
midst of heathendom, while straining after visions of 
perfection not to be realized in scenes of earth. But 
Plutarch’s thought in religion and in morals seems 
scarcely to have passed beyond the stage of human pro¬ 
gress reached long ago in Plato’s days, and five cen¬ 
turies had passed away and taught him no new principle 
of duty. 

He believed in the unity of God, and saw the vanity 
of idol worship; but to him the essence of religion lay 
not in dogmas or rules of life, but in solemn ritual. He 
clung to the edifying round of holy forms, though the 


CH. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 189 

faith to which they ministered of old was swept away, 
and though he had to people the unseen world with inter 
mediate spirits, and freely resort to allegoric fancy, to 
justify the whole mythology of Greek religion. 

In morals his ideal is confined to the culture and 
perfection of the personal aspirant; and amiable and 
chastened as are his tones of courtesy, his talk is still of 
happiness rather than of duty, and his spiritual horizon 
is too narrow to take in the thought of the loathsomeness 
of evil and the enthusiasm of charity. His calm serenity 
reminds us of the temples of old Greece, which attain in 
all that is attempted to a simple grace and a consum¬ 
mate art, with none of the gloom and mystery of a 
Christian cathedral, and with little of its witness to a 
higher world and its vision of unfulfilled ideals. 

But most of the scholars of the day made no preten¬ 
sions to such earnest thought, and shrunk from philoso¬ 
phy as from a churlish Mentor who spoke a 
language harsh and discordant in their ears. fjtcrSy 
These were literary artists, word-fanciers, J^etoridwis 
and rhetoricians, whose fluent speech and 
studied graces won for them oftentimes a world-wide 
fame, and raised them to wealth or dignity, but did not 
add a single thought to the intellectual capital of their 
age, and left behind no monument of lasting value. 

They studied the orators of earlier days to learn the 
secrets of their power; but the times were changed since 
the party-strife of the republican assemblies had stilted 
into insanity the stateman’s genius and passion. The 
pleadings even of the law courts were somewhat cold 
and lifeless when all the graver cases were sent up by 
appeal before the Emperor or his servants. They tried, 
indeed, to throw themselves back into the past, to re¬ 
open the debates of history, and galvanize into spasmodic 


190 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VIII. 


life the rigid skeletons of ancient quarrels. When men 
grew weary of these worn-out topics, the lecturers had 
recourse to paradox to quicken afresh the jaded fancy, 
startling the curiosity by some unlooked-for theme, 
writing panegyrics on Fever and Baldness, Dust and 
Smoke, the Fly even and the Gnat, or imagining almost 
impossible conjunctures to test their skill in casuistry or 
their fence of subtle dialectic. To others the subject mat¬ 
tered little. Like the Isaeus of whom Pliny writes admir¬ 
ingly, or the improvisatorioi a later age, they left the choice 
to the audience who came to hear them, and cared 
only to display the stock of images with which their 
memory was furnished, their power of graceful elocution 
in which every tone or gesture had artistic value, or 
their unfailing skill in handling all the arms of logical 
debate. 

Sometimes it was a question merely of the choice of 
words. The Greeks commonly were faithful to the purer 
models of good style; but the Roman taste, not content 
with the excellence of Cicero as approved by Quin¬ 
tilian’s practised judgment, mounted higher for its 
standards of Latinity, and prided itself on its familiar 
use of archaic words or phrases gleaned from Cato or 
from Ennius. The harmonious arrangement of these 
borrowed graces was in itself a proof of eloquence, and 
poverty of thought and frigid feeling mattered little, if 
the stock of such literary conceits was large enough. 

Fronto of Cirta passed for the first orator of his day at 
Rome, and was honoured with the friendship of three 
... „ „ Emperors, of whom the latest, Marcus Aure- 

lius, had been his pupil, and was to the last a 
loving friend. When scholars heard early in this cen¬ 
tury that the letters which passed between the sovereign 
and the professor had been found in a palimpsest under 


CH. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 191 

the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, they were full of 
eager interest to read them ; but they soon turned with 
contempt from the tasteless pedantry and tawdry affec¬ 
tation of the style which was then so much in vogue at 
Rome. It is curious to find the rhetorician speaking of 
his favourite art as the only serious study of the age. 

** For philosophy, ’ he thought, “ no style was needed ; no 
laboured periods, nor touching peroration. The student’s 
intellect was scarcely ruffled while the lecturer went 
droning on in the dull level of his tedious disquisitions. 
Lazy assent or a few lifeless words alone were needed, 
and the audience might be even half-asleep while the 
‘firstly and ‘secondly’ were leisurely set forth, and 
truisms disguised in learned phrases. That done, the 
learner s work was over: no conning over tasks by 
night, no reciting or declaiming, no careful study of the 
power of synonyms or the methods of translation.” He 
thought it mere presumption of philosophy to claim the 
sphere of morals for its special care. The domain of 
lhetoric was wide enough to cover that as well as 
many another field of thought ; her mission was to 
touch the feelings and to guide men by persuasive 
speech. For words were something infinitely sacred, 
too precious to be trifled with by any bungler in the art 
of speaking. As for the thoughts, they were not likely 
to be wanting if only the terms of oratory were fitly 
chosen. .Yet, with all the pedant’s vanity, we see dis¬ 
closed to us in his familiar letters an honest, true, and 
simple-minded man, who was jealous for the honour of 
his literary craft, who lived contentedly on scanty means, 
and never abused his influence at court to advance 
himself to wealth or honour. 

Few, like Fronto, were content to shine only with the 
lustre of their art. To live a Sophist’s life was a pro- 


192 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VIII. 


verbial phrase for a career of sumptuous luxury. To 
turn from rhetoric to philosophy was marked by outward 
changes like that to the monk’s cowl from the pleasures 
of the world. But it was in the Greek cities of the 
Empire that they paraded their magnificence with most 
assurance, and ruled supreme over an admiring public. 
Among the brilliant towns of Asia Minor, which were at 
this time at the climax of their wealth and splendour, 
there flourished an art and literature of fashion, to which 
the Sophists gave the tone as authors and critics. 

At Smyrna above all, the sanctuary of the Muses and 
the metropolis of Asia, as it proudly styled itself, the 
famous Polemon lorded it without dispute, 
deigning to prefer that city for .his home 
above the neighbouring rivals for his favour. When he 
went abroad, the chariot which bore him was decked 
with silver trappings and followed by a long train of 
slaves and hounds. So proud was his self-confidence 
that he was said to treat the municipalities as his infe¬ 
riors, and emperors and gods only as his equals. 
Smyrna, the city of his choice, profited largely by the 
reputation of its townsman. Scholars flocked to it to 
hear his lectures. Jarring factions were abashed at his 
rebuke, and forgot,their quarrels in his eulogies of peace. 
Monarchs honoured him with their favours, and lavished 
their bounty on his home : Hadrian even transferred his 
love from Ephesus to Smyrna, and gave the orator a 
noble sum to beautify the queen of cities. His self¬ 
esteem was fully equal to his great renown. When he 
went to Athens, unlike the other speakers who began 
with panegyrics on the illustrious city, he startled his 
hearers with the words, “You have the credit, men of 
Athens, of being accomplished critics of good style ; I 
shall soon see if you deserve the praise.” A young 


ch. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 


l 93 


aspirant of distinction came once to measure words with 
him, and asked him to name a time for showing off his 
powers. Nothing loth, he offered to speak off-hand, and 
after hearing him, the stranger slipped away by night to 
shun the confession of defeat. When Hadrian came to 
dedicate the stately works with which he had embellished 
Athens, the ceremony was not thought complete unless 
Polemon was sent for to deliver a sort of public sermon 
on the opening of the temple. When death came at last 
to carry him from the scene of all his triumphs, he said 
to the admirers who stood beside his bed, “ See that my 
tomb is firmly closed upon me, that the sun may not 
see me at last reduced to silence.” 

Ephesus, meantime, which took the second place 
among the cities of Ionia, had brought Favorinus from 
his native Arles to honour it with his brilliant 
talents. But neither of the great professors 
could brook a rival near his chair, and a war of epigrams 
and angry words was carried on between them, and was 
taken up with warmth by the partisans of each. At 
Pergamos, Aristocles was teaching still, after giving up 
philosophy and scandalizing serious minds by taking to 
the theatre and other haunts of pleasure. Each even of 
the lesser towns had its own school of rhetoric, and its 
own distinguished Sophist. 

Nor could the intellectual society of Athens fail to 
have its shining light in all this galaxy of luminous ta¬ 
lents. It had its University, with chairs endowed by 
government, and filled with teachers of distinction. But 
it had also a greater centre of attraction in its own 
Herodes Atticus, who devoted his enormous 
wealth, his stores of learning and his culti¬ 
vated tastes, to do honour to his birthplace, 
and make her literary circles the admiration of the edu- 

o 


Herodes 

Atticus. 


194 


The Age of the A ntonines. 


CH. VIII. 


cated world. His father, who came of an old family at 
Athens, had found a treasure in his house so great that 
he feared to claim it till he was reassured by Nerva. He 
used it with lavish generosity, frequently keeping open 
house; and at his death nearly all the town was in his 
debt. No expense was spared in the education of his 
son, who studied under the first teachers of the day, and 
made such progress that he was taken to Pannonia as a 
youth to display his powers of rhetoric before the 
Emperor Hadrian. The young student’s vanity was 
damped, however, by a signal failure, and he nearly 
drowned himself in the Danube in despair. Returning 
home in humbler mood, he gave himself once more to 
study. There and in Asia, where he served as an im¬ 
perial commissioner, he amassed ample stores of learn¬ 
ing and formed his style by intercourse with the greatest 
scholars of the day. After some years spent at Rome, 
he settled finally on his own estates, and became hence¬ 
forth the centra] figure of Athenian society, which was 
by general consent the most refined and cultivated of 
the age, and the most free from the insolent parade of 
wealth. 

The most promising of the students of the University 
were soon attracted to his side, where they found a 
liberal welcome and unfailing encouragement and help. 
Aulus Gellius gives a pleasant picture of the studious 
retreat in which he entertained them. “ In our college 
life at Athens, Herodes Atticus often bade us come to 
him In his country house of Uephissia we were shel¬ 
tered from the burning heat of summer by the shade of 
the vast groves, and the pleasant walks about the man¬ 
sion, whose cool site and sparkling basins made the 
whole neighbourhood resound with splashing waters and 
the song of birds.” Here at onetime or another came 


*95 


ch. viii. The Liierary Currents of the Age. 

most of the scholars who were to make a name in the 
great world, and who were glad to listen to the famous 
lecturer. A privileged few remained after the audience 
had dispersed, and were favoured with a course of spe 
cial comments which were heard with rapt attention 
Even the applause so usual in the Sophists’ lecture halls 
was then suspended. 

But it an orator of any eminence arrived at Athens 
and wished to say a word in public, Herodes came 
with his friends to do the honours of the day, to move 
the vote of thanks to the illustrious stranger, and 
to display all his practised skill in the tournament of 
rhetoric. Not indeed that the reception was so courteous 
always. One Philager had the imprudence to write an 
offensive letter to Herodes before he came to Athens. 
On his arrival the theatre in which he had intended to 
declaim was crowded with the admirers of the Athenian 
teacher, who had malicious pleasure in detecting an old 
harangue which was passed off before them as a new 
one, and hissed the poor Sophist off the stage when he 
tried vainly to recover credit. Nor did the talents of the 
orator save him always from a petty vanity. Aristides 
wished on one occasion to deliver the Panathenaic 
speech; and to disarm the opposition of his rival, whose 
jealousy he feared, he submitted to his criticism the draft 
of a weak and colourless address. But instead of this, 
when the day came to deliver it, the actual speech 
proved to be of far higher merit, and Herodes saw that 
he was duped. 

One special object of his care was purity of diction. 
Not content with forming his style upon the best models 
of the past, he was known even to consult upon nice 
points of language an old hermit who lived retired in the 
heart of Attica. “He lives in the district/’ was his ex* 


196 The Age of the An to nines. ch vm. 

planation, where the purest Attic always has been 
spoken, and where the old race has not been swept 
away by strangers.” We may find a curious illustration 
of his affectation of archaic forms in the fact that some of 
the inscriptions of his monuments are written in Greek 
characters of a much earlier date, which seemingly in 
the enthusiasm of the antiquarian he was desirous to 
revive. 

A like spirit of reverence for the past is shown in his 
regard for the great religious centres of Hellenic life. 
Not content with adorning Athens, like Hadrian, with 
stately works of art, he left the tokens of his fond respect 
at Delphi, Corinth, and Olympia, where new temples and 
theatres rose at his expense. There were few parts of 
Greece, indeed, which had not cause to thank the magni¬ 
ficent patron of the arts, whose taste inclined, after the 
fashion of the day, to the colossal, and was turned only 
with regret from the idea of cutting a canal through the 
Corinthian Isthmus. 

In spite of all his glory and his lavish outlay, the 
Athenians wearied of their benefactor, or powerful 
enemies at least combined to crush him. Impeached 
before the governor of the province on charges of oppres¬ 
sion, he was sent to Sirmium when Marcus Aurelius 
was busy with his Marcomannic war. Faustina had been 
prejudiced against him, the Emperor’s little son was 
taught to lisp a prayer for the Athenians, and the great 
orator, broken down by bereavement and ingratitude, 
refused to exert his eloquence in his own behalf, and 
broke out even into bitter words as he abruptly left his 
sovereign’s presence. But no charges could be proved 
against him, and the Emperor was not a man to deal 
harshly with his old friend for a hasty word. 

Among the visitors at Cephissia, in the circle gathered 


cri. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 197 

round Herodes, probably was Apuleius, who had left 
Carthage to carry on his studies in the lecture 
rooms and libraries of Athens. Philosopher A P ulems - 
and pietist, poet, romanticist, and rhetorician, he was an 
apt example of the manysidedness of the sophistic train¬ 
ing, as it was then spread universally throughout the 
Roman Empire. He is a curious illustration of the 
social characteristics of the age, combining as he does 
in his own person, and expressing in his varied works, 
most of the moral and religious tendencies which are 
singly found elsewhere in other writers of these times. 

i°. There is no originality of thought or style. In every 
work we trace the influence of Greek models. His cele¬ 
brated novel of the Transformation of a Man into an 
Ass is based upon a tale which is also found in Lucian; 
the stirring incidents of comedy or tragic pathos which 
are so strangely interspersed, the description of the rob¬ 
ber band, the thrilling horrors of the magic art, the licen¬ 
tious gallantries therein described, are freely taken from 
the Greek romances which he found ready to his hand 
in many of the countries where he travelled. Even the 
beautiful legend of Cupid and of Psyche, which lies em¬ 
bedded like a pure vein of gold in the coarser strata of 
his fiction, is an allegoric fancy which belongs to a purer 
and a nobler mind than his. The style indeed is more 
attractive than that of any of the few Latin writers of his 
age, for Apuleius had a poet’s fancy, and could pass with 
ease from grave to gay; but the author is overweighted 
by his learning, and spoils the merit of his diction by 
ill-adapted archaisms and tawdry ornaments of preten¬ 
tious rhetoric. 

2°. In him, as in the literature of the times, there is 
none of the natural simplicity of perfect art, but a con¬ 
stant striving for effect and a parade of ingenuity, as if 


198 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VIII. 


to challenge the applause of lecture-rooms in a society 
of mutual admiration. One of his works consists of the 
choice passages, the lively openings or touching perora¬ 
tions, gleaned from a number of such public lectures, to 
serve, it may be, as a sort of commonplace-book for the 
beginner’s use. 

3 0 . As a religious philosopher he illustrates the eclectic 
spirit then so common. From the theories of Plato he 
accepted the faith in a Supreme Being and an immortal 
soul; but instead of the types or ideas of the Greek 
sage, the unseen world was peopled by the fancy of 
Apuleius with an infinite hierarchy of demon agencies, 
going to and fro among the ways of men, startling them 
with phantom shapes, but making themselves at times 
the ministers of human will under the influence of magic 
arts and incantations. 

4 0 . We find in him a curious blending of mocking 
insight and of mystic dread. He vividly expresses in 
the pages of his novel the imposture and the licence of 
the priestly charlatans who travelled through the world 
making capital out of the timorous credulity of the 
devout. Yet except Aristides no educated mind that 
we read of in that age was more intensely mastered by 
superstitious hopes and fears. The mysteries of all the 
ancient creeds have a powerful attraction for his fancy ; 
he is eager to be admitted to the holy rites, and to pass 
within the veil which hides the secrets from the eyes of 
the profane. Nothing can exceed the fervour of his en¬ 
thusiastic sentiment when he speaks of the revelation of 
the spirit world disclosed in the sacred forms before his 
kindling fancy. 

5 0 . Finally, in his case we have brought vividly before 
our minds the difference between devotion and morality. 
The sensuality of heathendom is reflected for our study in 


ch. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age . 


199 


many a lascivious and disgusting page of Apuleius; and 
though he speaks of the chastity and self-denial needed 
tor the pious votary to draw near to the God whom he 
adores, yet the abstinence must have been perfunctory 
indeed in one whose fancy could at times run riot in 
images so foul and lewd as to revolt every pure-minded 
reader. 

We have seen that the scholars of the times were 
almost wholly living on the intellectual capital of former 
ages ; in rhetoric and history, in religion and philosophy, 
they were looking to the past for guidance, and renew¬ 
ing the old jealousies of rival studies. In the credulous 
and manysided mind of Apuleius all the literary currents 
flowed on peacefully together side by side; but in 
Lucian we may note the culture of the age breaking all 
the idols of its adoration and losing every trace of faith 
and earnestness and self-respect. 

The great satirist of Samosata was a Syrian by birth, 
though his genius and language were purely Greek. 
Apprenticed early to a sculptor, he soon laid down the 
carver’s tools to devote himself to letters, 
and making little progress at the bar of 
Antioch, took to the Sophist’s wandering life, and, like 
the others of his trade, courted the applause of idle 
crowds by formal panegyrics on the Parrot or the Fly. 
In middle life he grew wearied of such frivolous pursuits, 
and finding another literary vein more suited to his 
talents, composed the many dialogues and essays in 
which all the forms of thought and faith and social 
fashion pass before us in a long procession, each in turn 
to be stripped of its show of dignity and grace. 

It was an easy matter to expose the follies of the 
legendary tales of early Greece, and many a writer had 
already tried to show that such artless imaginings of 


200 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VIII. 


childlike fancy were hopelessly at war with all moral 
codes and earnest thought. But it was left for Lucian 
to deal with them in a tone of entire indifference, with¬ 
out a trace of passion or excitement, or spirit of avowed 
attack. The gods and goddesses of old Olympus come 
forward in his dialogues without the flowing draperies of 
poetic forms which half disguised the unloveliness of 
many a fancy ; they talk to each other of their vanities 
and passions simply and frankly, without reserve or 
shame, till the creations of a nation’s childhood, brought 
down from the realms of fairyland to the realities of 
common life, seem utterly revolting in the nudities of 
homely prose. 

Nor had Lucian more respect for the motley forms of 
eastern worship to which the public mind had lately 
turned in its strong need of something to adore. He 
painted in his works the moods of credulous sentiment 
which sought for new sources of spiritual comfort in the 
glow and mystery and excitement of those exotic rites ; 
he described in lively terms the consternation of the 
deities of Greece when they found their council chamber 
thronged by the grotesque brotherhood of unfamiliar 
shapes, finding a voice at last in the protests of 
Momus, who came forward to resist their claims to equal¬ 
ity with the immortals of Olympus. “Attis and Corybas 
and Sabazius, and the Median Mithras, who does not 
know a word of Greek and can make no answer when 
his health is drunk, these are bad enough; still they 
could be endured ; but that Egyptian there, swathed 
like a mummy, with a dog’s head on his shoulders, what 
claim has he, when he barks, to be listened to as a god? 
What means yon dappled bull of Memphis, with his 
oracles and train of priests ? I should be ashamed to 
tell of all the ibises, apes, and goats, and thousand dei- 


ch. viii. The Literary Currents of the Age. 201 

ties still more absurd, with which the Egyptians have 
deluged us , and I cannot understand, my friends, how 
you can bear to have them honoured as much as, or 
more even than yourselves. And, Jupiter, how can you 
let them hang those ram’s horns on your head ? ” Momus 
is reminded that these are mysterious emblems, which an 
ignorant outsider must not mock at, and he readily ad¬ 
mits that in those times only the initiated could dis¬ 
tinguish between a monster and a god. 

Lucian’s banter did not flow from any deeper source of 
faith in a religion purer than those bastard forms of idol 
worship. He was entirely sceptical and unimpassioned, 
and the unseen world was to his thoughts animated by 
no higher life, nor might man look for anything beyond 
the grave. His attacks upon the established faith were 
far from being carried on in the spirit of a philosophic 
propaganda. He was unsparing in his mockery of the 
would-be sages who talked so grandly of the contempt 
for riches and for glory, of following Honour as their 
only guide, of keeping anger within bounds, and treating 
the great ones of the earth as equals, and who yet must 
have a fee for every lesson, and do homage to the rich. 
“They are greedy of filthy lucre, more passionate than 
dogs, more cowardly than hares, more lascivious than 
asses, more thievish than cats, more quarrelsome than 
cocks.” He describes at length the indignities to which 
they are willing to submit as domestic moralists in the 
service of stingy and illiterate patrons, or in the train of 
some fine lady who likes to show at times her cultivated 
tastes, but degrades her spiritual adviser to the company 
of waiting maids and insolent pages, or even asks him to 
devote his care to the confinement of her favourite dog, 
and to the litter soon to be expected. One by one they 
pass before us in his pages, the several types of militant 


2 02 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. VIII. 


philosophy,—the popular lecturer, the court confessor, 
the public missionary in Cynic dress, the would-be pro¬ 
phets, and the wonder-mongers, astrologers, and charla¬ 
tans, all crowding to join the ranks of a profession 
where the only needful stock in trade was a staff, a 
mantle, and a wallet, with ready impudence and a fluent 
tongue. 

Was Lucian concerned for the good name of the 
earnest thinkers of old time, the founders of the great 
schools of thought, whose dogmas were parodied by 
these impostors ? Not so indeed The old historic names 
appear before us in his auction scene ; but the paltry 
biddings made for each show how he underrated them, 
and in his pictures of the realms of the departed spirits 
all the high professions of the famous moralists of Greece 
did not raise them above an ignominious want of dignity 
and courage. 

Thus with mocking irony the scoffer rang out the 
funeral knell of the creeds and systems of the ancient 
world. Genius and heroism, high faith and earnest 
thought, seemed one by one to turn to dust and ashes 
under the solvent of his merciless wit. Religion was a 
mere syllabus of old wives’ fables or a creaking ma¬ 
chinery of supeinatural terrors ; philosophy was an airy 
unreality of metaphysic cobwebs ; enthusiasm was the 
disguise of knaves and badge of dupes; life was an 
ignoble scramble uncheered by any rays of higher light 
and unredeemed by any faith or hope from a despairing 
self-contempt. 


CH. ix. Administrative Forms of Government. 203 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE ADMINISTRATIVE FORS OF THE IMPERIAL 
GOVERNMENT. 

The imperial ruler governed with unqualified authority. 
No checks or balances or constitutional safeguards were 
provided by the theory of the state, and the 
venerable forms which lingered on existed 
mainly by his sufferance. The Curule offices 
remained only as part of the showy cere 
monial of the life of Rome, but with no substantial 
power. The senate met to help the monarch with their 
counsels, or to register his decrees in formal shapes; 
but the reins had passed entirely from their hands. The 
local liberties throughout the provinces were little 
meddled with, and municipal self rule provoked, as yet, 
no jealousy ; but it might be set aside at any moment by 
a Caesar’s will, or its machinery abused as an engine of 
oppression. Meantime, however, the transition from the 
unsystematic forms of the Republic was only slowly going 
on, and the agents of the central government were few 
compared with those of the widespread bureaucracy of 
later days. 

The imperial household had been organized at first 
like that of any Roman noble. Educated slaves or 
freedmen, commonly of Greek extraction, wrote tfie 
letters, kept the books, or managed the accounts in 
wealthy houses, and filled a great variety of posts, partly 
menial, partly confidential. In default of an( j h is 
ministers of state and public functionaries ministers 
of tried experience, the early Emperors had first his own 

. . domestics, 

used their own domestic servants to mul- 


The im¬ 
perial ruler 
was an 
absolute 
sovereign. 


20_| 


1'he Age oj the Antonines. 


CH. IX. 


tiply their eyes and ears and hands for the multitudinous 
business to be transacted. Weak rulers had been 
often tools in the hands of their own insolent freedmen, 
who made colossal fortunes by working on their master’s 
fears or selling his favour to the highest bidder. 

But the Emperors of the second century were too 
strong and self-contained to stoop to the meanness of 
such backstairs intrigue, and we hear little 

though . . . . 

afterwards in their days of the sinister influence of the 
imperial freedmen. But the offices which 
they had filled in direct attendance on the ruler were 
raised in seeming dignity, though shorn perhaps of 
actual power, when Hadrian placed in them knights 
who might aspire to rise higher on the ladder of pro¬ 
motion. Of such posts there were four of special trust 
and confidence. 

1°. First came the office of the Privy Purse (a rationi- 
bus), which controlled all the accounts of the sovereign’s 
revenues, and of the income of the Fiscus. 
The poet Statius describes in lofty style the 
importance and variety of the cares which 
thus devolved upon a powerful freedman 
who held the post for several reigns. “The 
produce of Iberian gold mines, of the Egyptian harvests, 
of the pearl fisheries of the Eastern seas, of the flocks of 
Tarentum, of the transparent crystal made in Alexan¬ 
drian factories, of the forests of Numidia, of the ivory 
of India, whatever the winds waft from every quarter 
into port—all is entrusted to his single care. The out¬ 
goings are also his concern. The supplies of all the 
armies pass daily through his hands, the necessary sums 
to stock the granaries of Rome, to build aqueducts and 
temples, to deck the palaces of Caesar, and to keep the 
mints at work. He has scant time for sleep or food, none 


The most 

important 

of these 

were 

i°. t a 

rationibns 

(treasurer). 


(_H ix. Administrative For.ns of Government. 205 

for social intercourse, and pleasure is a stranger to his 
thoughts.” 

2°. The prince’s Secretary (ab epistulis) required of 
course a high degree of literary skill, as well as the 
powers of an accomplished penman. “ He 0 Ab 
has,” says the same poet of another freed- epistulis 
man, “ to speed the missives of the monarch 
through the world, to guide the march of armies, to re¬ 
ceive the glad news of victory from the Rhine, the 
Danube the Euphrates, from the remotest lands of 
Thule, whither the conquering eagles have already made 
their way. His hand prepares the officers’ commissions, 
and lets men know who have gained the post of centu¬ 
rion or tribune. He has to ask if the waters of the Nile 
have risen high enough for a good harvest, if rain has 
fallen in Africa, and to make a thousand like enqui¬ 
ries ; not Isis, nor Mercury himself, has so many mes¬ 
sages of moment.” In later days there were two 
departments of the office, for the languageof Greece and 
for that of Italy. The former of the two was coveted by 
the most famous scholars of the age, and was looked 
upon as the natural reward for purity of style and critical 
discernment. It led in time to the higher rank and the 
substantial emoluments of office. 

3 0 . It was the duty of another minister (a libellis), to 
open the petitions or complaints intended for his master’s 
ear, and probably to make abstracts of their 
contents. If we may trust Seneca’s account 
the duties were arduous enough, since 
Polybius, who discharged them, had little 
time to nurse his private sorrows. "Thou hast so many 
thousand men to hear, so many memorials to set in 
order. To lay such a mass of business, that flows in 
from the wide world, in fitting method before the eyes 


3 0 . a 
libellis 
(clerk of 
petitions). 


206 


The Age of the Antonines . 


CH. IX. 


of thy great prince, thou must have thyself unfaltering 
courage. Thou must not weep, for thou hast so many 
weeping petitioners to hear. To dry the tears of so 
many who are in danger, and would fain win their way 
to the mercy of thy gracious Caesar, thou must needs 
dry thine own eyes first.” 

4°. The Chamberlains often attained to large influ¬ 
ence by their talents and address; but there seemed 
something menial in the duties of the office, 
cu\o (cham- which was therefore filled by slaves or 
berlam). freedmen, though, as the court adopted 

more of the sentiment and language of the East, the 
overseer of the sacred bedchamber (praepositus sacri 
cubiculi) filled a larger place in public thought, and 
gained at times complete ascendancy over a weak or 
vicious monarch, like the mayors of the palace over 
puppet kings in France. 

Of far higher social dignity were the official friends 
of Caesar (amici Caesaris), the notables of Rome who 
were honoured with his confidence, and 
called on for advice as members as a sort 
of Privy Council or Consistory, which met in 
varying numbers at the discretion of the 
prince, to debate with him on the affairs of state. It was 
an old custom with great Roman nobles to divide their 
friends according to gradations of their rank and influ¬ 
ence. The Emperor’s court was formed on the same 
model, and it was of no slight moment to the aspirant 
after honours to be ranked in one or other of the two 
great privileged classes. Out of these were chosen the 
companions (comites, counts) of the prince in all his 
travels, who journeyed with him at his cost, and were 
entertained by him at his table. In the first century the 
rank had proved a dangerous eminence. With moody and 


The Privy 
Council 
(amici 
Caesaris). 


ch. ix. Administrative Forms of Government. 207 

suspicious tyrants, a word, a look, had proved enough to 
hurl the courtier from his post of honour. But in the 
period before us the lot was a far happier one. The 
Privy Councillors were treated with a marked respect, 
and by the Antonines at least they were not burdened 
with the duties of personal attendance on the prince, or 
the mere etiquette of social intercourse, save when the 
business of state required their presence. At last the 
term became a purely honorary title, and the great 
functionaries throughout the empire were styled the 
friends or counts of Caesar. % 

The imperial officers were not appointed, like the 
ministers of state in modern times, to great depart¬ 
ments, such as War, the Home Office, the Exchequer; 
but each held a fraction of delegated power within local 
limits carefully prescribed. The city of Rome, the 
prince’s bodyguard, the urban watch, a province or an 
army, were put under the command of officers who 
looked only to the Emperor for orders. Two of these 
posts towered high above the rest in dignity and trust. 

(1) The Praefect of the City represented the Emperor 
in his absence, and maintained civil order in the capital. 
The police of Rome lay wholly in his sphere 

of competence, with summary powers to offh^City^ 
proceed against slaves or disturbers of the 
peace, out of which grew gradually the functions of a 
High Court of Criminal Jurisdiction. 

(2) The Praefect of the Praetorian soldiers was at first 
only the commander of the few thousand household 
troops who served as the garrison of Rome. The Pra;fect 
While the legions were far away from the of the Praeto- 
frontier, the temper of the Praetorians was of nan uar s ' 
vital moment, and the Praefects might and did dispose 
of the safety of a throne. Sometimes their loyalty seemed 


20 8 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH IX. 


to be secured by boons and honours, or by marriage 
ties ; sometimes two were named together, to balance 
each other by their rivalries; but they were always dan¬ 
gerous to their master, till in the fourth century the 
power of the sword was wholly taken from them and 
lodged in the hands of separate commanders. Already 
the greatest jurists of the day had been appointed to the 
office, to replace the Emperor on the seat of justice, and 
it became at last the supreme court of appeal in civil 
jurisdiction. 

The whole of the Ro^ian empire, save Italy alone, 
was divided into provinces, and in each the central 
government was represented by a ruler sent from Rome. 
The For the peaceful lands long since annexed, 

Provincial where no armed force was needed, a gov- 
ernor (proconsul or propraetor) was chosen 
by the senate, in whose name the country was adminis¬ 
tered. For border lands, or others where there was any 
danger of turbulence or civil feud, a lieutenant (legatus) 
of the Emperor ruled in his master’s name, and held the 
power of the sword. There were doubtless cases still of 
cruelty and greed; but the worst abuses of republican 
misgovernment had been long since swept away. The 
prince or his councillors kept strict watch and ward, and 
sharply called offenders to account; the provincial no¬ 
tables sat in the imperial senate, in which every real 
grievance could find a champion and a hearing. There 
was a financial agent (procurator) of the sovereign in 
each country, ready to note and to report all treasonable 
action; despatches travelled Rapidly by special posts 
organized by the government along the great highways. 
The armed force was seldom lodged in the hands of 
civil rulers; the payment of fixed salaries for office 
made indirect gains seem far less venial; and the old 


ch. ix. Administrative Forms of Government. 209 

sentiment was gone that the world was governed in the 
interest of Rome or of its nobles. The responsibilities of 
power raised the tone of many of the rulers, and moral 
qualities which had languished in the stifling air of the 
great city flourished on the seat of justice before the 
eyes of subject peoples. 

A certain court or retinue followed each governor to 
his province, some of which received a definite sanction 
and a salary from the state. There were trusted inti¬ 
mates on whose experience or energy he might rely, 
trained jurists to act as assessors in the 
courts, and to guide his judgment on nice suf te their 
points of law, young nobles eager to see life 
in foreign lands, literary men to amuse his leisure 
moments on the journey, or to help in drafting his 
despatches, practised accountants for financial business, 
surveyors or architects for public works, together with 
personal attendants to minister to their master’s wants. 
None of these, save perhaps the notaries (scribse), were 
permanent officials, and their number on the whole was 
small, and quite disproportionate to the size and popu¬ 
lation of the province. For the agents of the central 
government were few, and local liberties were still 
respected, though there were ominous signs of coming 
changes. 

The imperial rulers had shown little jealousy as yet of 
municipal self rule, and almost every town was a unit 
of free-life, with many administrative forms 
of local growth still undisturbed. Magis- magistrates 
trates were elected year by year in each ; 
town councils formed of leading citizens and ex-officials 
ruled all concerns of public interest; general assemblies 
of the townsmen met from time to time, and took an 
active part in the details of civic life, long after the 

P 


210 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. IX. 


and local 
freedom. 


comitia of Rome were silenced. Nor were these merely 
idle forms which disguised the reality of servitude. Men 
still found scope for active energy in managing the 
affairs of their own towns; they still saw prizes for a pas¬ 
sionate ambition in the places and the honours which 
their fellow-countrymen could give. 

We have only to follow the career of some of the lead¬ 
ing provincials of the age, we have only to turn over the 
copies of the numerous inscriptions left on stone or 
bronze, to see how much remained in outward show at 
least, of the old forms of republican activity. 
A Herodes Atticus could still be a com¬ 
manding figure in the life of Greece: a 
Dion Chrysostom could find occasion for his eloquence 
in soothing the passions of assemblies and reconciling 
the feuds of neighbouring cities. No sacrifices seemed 
too costly for the wealthy who wished to be dignitaries 
in their native boroughs. To gain a year or two of 
office they spent vast sums in building libraries or 
aqueducts, or baths, or schools, or temples, squandering 
sometimes a fortune in the extravagant magnificence of 
largesses or shows. They disputed with each other not 
only for the office of duumvir or of sedile, but for hono¬ 
rary votes of every kind, for precedence at the theatres, 
for statues whose heads were to be presently replaced 
with those of other men, for a flattering inscription even 
on the building which the city had accepted at their 
hands. 

But if we look below the surface, and listen to moral¬ 
ists like Plutarch, who best reflect the social features of 
provincial life, we may have cause to think that public 
spirit was growing fainter every day, and that the securi¬ 
ties for freedom and self-rule were very few. 

(i) Rome was the real centre of attraction as of old, 


ch. ix. Administrative Forms of Government. 211 


the aim of all ambitious hopes. Local dis- ., , 

with few gua- 

tinctions were a natural stepping-stone to a rantees of 
place in the Senate or the Privy Council, as r mu8tratei 
and employments else of little worth found by plutarch - 
a value as the lowest rounds of a ladder of promotion, 
on which none could mount high until they had made a 
name at Rome. Men of good families dropped their 
ancestral titles and latinized their names to pass as de¬ 
scendants of the conquerors of the world. In a spirit of 
flattery and mean compliance, the municipal 
authorities abridged with their own hands ty mum ' 

° _ cipalities 

their ancient freedom, tore up their old tra- courted 

interference 

ditional charters, consulted the governor at 

every turn, and laid humbly at his feet the reins of 

power. 

Of such unconscious traitors Plutarch speaks with 
just severity. He reminds his readers that the invalids 
who have been wont to bathe and eat only at the 
bidding of their doctor, soon lose the healthy enjoyment 
of their strength ; and so too those who would appeal to 
Caesar or his servants in every detail of public life, find 
to their cost that they are masters of themselves no 
longer; they degrade senate, magistrates, courts, and 
people, and reduce their country to a state of impotent 
and debasing servitude. 

He would have them cherish no illusions, and give 
themselves no airs of independence, for real power had 
passed out of their hands ; but it was needless folly to 
seem to court oppression, or to appear incapable of using 
the liberties which still remained. For these lasted on 
by sufferance only, and had no guarantees of perma¬ 
nence ; the old federal leagues had passed away, and 
there was no bond of union between the cities save the 
tie of loyalty to the Emperor at Rome. As units of free 


212 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. IX. 


life, linked to each other by some system of provincial 
parliaments, they might have given effective utterance 
to the people’s will, and have formed organized centres 
of resistance to oppression, but such assemblies can be 
hardly traced, save here and there in feeble forms, and 
the imperial mechanism was brought to bear directly on 
a number of weak and isolated atoms. 

(2) The proconsuls or lieutenants of Caesar grew im¬ 

patient of any show of independence or any variety of 
^ ^ th local usage. Not content with the mainte- 

governors nance of peace and order, and with guarding 
meddle 10 the interests of state, they began to meddle 
more ’ in all the details of civic life. A street-riot, 

or a financial crisis, or an architect’s mistake in public 
works, was excuse enough for superseding lower powers, 
and changing the whole machinery of local politics. 
Sometimes immunities were swept away, and old cus¬ 
toms set aside by self-willed rulers greedy of extended 
power, ignorant even of the language of the subject 
peoples, and careless of the associations of the past. 
Sometimes conscientious men like Pliny, who rose above 
sinister or selfish aims, would interpose in the interests 
of symmetry and order, or wished to prove their loyalty 
and zeal by carrying out their master’s plans with scant 
regard for old privileges or historic methods. 

(3) The imperial system was one of personal rule, and 
the stronger and more self-contained the Caesar on the 

throne, the more was he tempted to make 
his government felt in every department of 
his power. The second century was the age 
of able and untiring rulers, whose activity 
was felt in every part of their wide empire. 
The ministers who knew the temper of their sovereigns 
appealed to them in every case of doubt, and the impe- 


(3) and the 
Caesar on 
the throne 
was more 
and more 
appealed to 


ch. ix. Administrative Forms of Governmefit. 213 


rial posts along the great high roads were kept in con¬ 
stant work with the despatches which went to and fro 
between every province and the centre. From distant 
Bithynia came Pliny’s questions about a bath, a guild of 
firemen, the choice of a surveyor, or the status of a run¬ 
away slave who had enlisted in the army; and Trajan 
thought it needful to write special letters to forbid a 
couple of soldiers being shifted from their post or to 
sanction the removal of a dead man’s ashes. 

Under cautious princes like the Antonines the effects 
of an absolutism so unqualified were for a time disguised; 
but the evils of misgovernment, which in the last century 
had been mainly felt at Rome, might now, as the empire 
grew more centralized, be known in every land. They 
were not hid from the eyes of Plutarch, who preferring 
as he does monarchic rule to every other social form, 
and looking on the sovereign as the representative of 
heaven on earth, yet insists on the grave danger to the 
world if the prince has not learnt the lessons of self- 
mastery. “He should be like the sun, which moves 
most slowly when it attains its highest elevation. 

We shall better understand the perils of the system 
then adopted if we look forward to some of 

the actual evils of the centralized monarchy evils of aj 

- , , . later age. 

of the later empire. 

i°. The sums which flowed into the treasury of Rome 
seem to have been still moderate, if compared with the 
vast extent of her dominions, and the wealth j0 The 
of many of the subject lands. Much of the pressure of 
expense of government fell upon the local 
resources of the towns, which had their own domains, 
or levied special taxes for the purpose; but the rest may 
be brought under three heads, (1) that of the pay and 
pensions for the soldiers of the legions, (2) of the 


214 


The Age of the Ante nines. 


CH. IX. 


largesses of corn or money, and (3) of the prince’s civil 
list, including the charges of his household and the 
salaries of public servants. The first and second varied 
little in amount; there were few changes in the number of 
troops or the expenses of the service save in crises like the 
Dacian or Marcomannic war; at Rome the recipients of 
corn were kept at nearly the same figure, and it was dan¬ 
gerous to neglect the imperial bounties to the populace 
of the great towns. The third was the division in which 
a thrifty ruler might retrench, or a prodigal exhaust his 
coffers by extravagance. The question was one of per¬ 
sonal economy or self-indulgence, for the civil servants 
were not many, and their salaries as yet formed no great 
item in the budget. It was by the wantonness of inso¬ 
lent caprices that tyrants such as Caligula or Nero 
drained their treasuries, and were driven to refill them 
by rapine or judicial murder. But while they struck at 
wealthy victims they spared the masses of the people, 
and it was left to an unselfish ruler like Vespasian to 
face the outcry and the indignation caused by a heavier 
system of taxation. 


In general the empire had, in that respect at least, been 
a boon to the whole Roman world, for it had replaced 
the licence and extortion of provincial go- 
first, erate vernOT s and farmers of the tithes by a 

system of definite tariff and control. The 
land-tax levied in every country beyond Italy had taken 
commonly the form of a tithe or fraction of the produce 
farmed by middlemen (publican!), and collected by their 
agents, who were often unscrupulous and venal. It was 
a method wasteful to the state and oppressive to the 
subjects, and full of inequalities and seeming hardships. 

ie first step taken by Augustus was to carry out a 
general survey of the empire as a needful condition of a 


ch. ix. Administrative Forms of Government. 215 

fairer distribution of the burdens; another was to control 
the licence of the publicans by a financial agent in each 
province, holding a commission directly from the prince. 

Further steps were gradually taken, and by the time 
of Marcus Aurelius the system of middlemen was swept 
away. Tithes were not levied as before in kind, but a 
land-tax (tributum soli) of uniform pressure took their 
place. Italy had long enjoyed immunities under the 
Republic, when she lived upon the plunder of the world; 
but custom-duties (portoria) were imposed on her by the 
first Caesar, and tolls at the markets (centesima rerum 
venalium) by Augustus, while succession duties (vi- 
cesima hereditatum) were levied in the course of the 
same reign in spite of the indignant outcry of the wealth¬ 
ier Romans. These or their equivalents under other 
names were the chief sources of revenue, to which we 
have to add the lands and mines which passed into the 
imperial domains as the heritage of the state or of the 
royal houses of the provinces, together with the proceeds 
of legacies and confiscations. 

There was no large margin, it would seem, for per¬ 
sonal extravagance or a social crisis ; but the Antonines 
were happily of frugal habits, and one of became 
them, as we have seen, parted with the gradually 

heir-looms of the palace rather than lay more in- 

fresh burdens on his people. Future rulers 
were less scrupulous than they. The brilliancy of per¬ 
sonal display, the costly splendours borrowed from the 
Eastern courts, the charge of a rapidly increasing civil 
service, the corruption of the agents of the treasury, the 
pensions paid to the barbarian leaders—these and other 
causes led to a steady drain upon the exchequer which 
it was harder every year to keep supplied. Fresh dues 
and tolls of various kinds were frequently imposed ; the 


2l6 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. IX. 


burdens on the land grew more oppressive as the pros¬ 
perity of the wealth producing classes waned, till at last 
a chorus of many voices rises to deplore the general 
misery caused by the pressure of taxation, the insolence 
of the collectors in the towns, the despair of the poor 
artisans when the poll-tax is demanded, parents selling 
their children into slavery, women driven to a life of 
shame, landowners flying from the exhausted fields to 
take refuge even with barbarian peoples, and all signs 
of universal bankruptcy. 

2°. The administrative system gradually became more 
bureaucratic and more rigidly oppressive. In early 
0 The days the permanent civil servants of the 

increase of the state were few in number. At Rome we read 
bureaucracy 0 f notar j es or accountants (scribae), of jave¬ 
lin men (lictores), and ushers (apparitores) in personal 
attendance on the magistrates. These were seemingly 
allowed to form themselves in guilds in defence of their 
professional rights, and gained a sort of vested interest 
in their office, which could at times be even bought 
or sold. 

But their number and importance was not great. We 
have little evidence of like classes in the provinces, and 
the governor’s suite went out and returned with him 
as his own friends or retainers, while doubtless servile 
labour was largely used upon the spot. 

Such a practice was too rude and immature to last 
long after the activity of the central government became 
^ ^ more intense. In the course of time, there¬ 

by oppressive fore, the whole character of such official 
thecKn” 5 0n work was changed; the accountants and 
Service. the writers rapidly increased in number as 

the business grew upon their hands, and the state secured 
its servants a professional status. This, strange to say, 


ch. ix. Administrative Forms of Government. 217 


was called a military service (militia); many of the 
grades of rank adopted in different stages of employ¬ 
ment were borrowed from the army; a certain uniform 
was worn at last, and commissions were made out in the 
Emperor’s name, while a sort of martial discipline was 
observed in the bureaux (scrinia). Honours and privi¬ 
leges and illustrious names were given to the heads of 
the official hierarchy; but the state began to tighten its 
grasp upon its agents, to require a long period of ser¬ 
vice, to refuse permission to retire until a substitute was 
found, to force the children to learn their fathers’ craft 
and step one day into their places, till the whole civil 
service gradually became one large official caste, in 
which each generation was bound to a lifelong servitude, 
disguised under imposing names and military forms. 

3 0 . A like series of changes may be traced in a higher 
social order. In all the lands through which Greek 
or Italian influence had spread, some sort 
of town-council had existed as a necessary ^nou^he^ 1 
element of civic life. The municipal laws c * me onerous 
of the first Caisars defined the functions of 
this order (ordo decurionum, curia), which like the 
Roman Senate was composed of ex officials, or other 
citizens of dignity and wealth. 

For a century or more, while the tide of public life 
flowed strongly in the provinces, the status of a coun¬ 
cillor (decurio, curialis) was prized, and leading men 
spent time and money freely in the service of their 
fellows. As the empire grew more centralized, local 
distinctions were less prized, and we find in the inscrip¬ 
tions fewer names of patriots willing, like Herodes Atti- 
cus, to enrich their native cities with the monuments of 
their lavish bounty. As municipal honours were less 
valued, the old relation was inverted, and the councillors 


2 1 8 


The Age of the Antonines. 


CH. IX. 


had to fill in turn the public offices, which instead of 
dignities were felt to be oppressive burdens. 

By the time of Trajan we find the traces of unwilling¬ 
ness to serve, and in the reign of Marcus Aurelius the 
reluctance had grown already more intense. The sophist 
Aristides tells us frankly of his eagerness to escape from 
civic changes, how he wept and fasted, prayed and 
pleaded to his gods, till he saw the vision of white maids 
who came to set him free, and found the dream was 
followed by imperial despatches which contained the 
dispensation so much longed for. 

The central government, in its concern, devised more 
marks of honour and distinction ; but still men grew less 
willing to wear the gilded chains, for the responsibilities 
of office grew more weighty. The order of decuriones had 
not only to meet as it best could the local needs, but to 
raise the imperial taxes, to provide for the commissariat 
of the armies, and keep the people in good humour by 
spectacles and corn and grants of money. Men sought 
to quit their homes and part with their estates, and hoard 
as best they could the proceeds of the sale, if only they 
could free themselves from public duties. But still the 
state pursued them with its claims; the service of the coun¬ 
cillors became a charge on landed property, the citizen 
of means was a functionary who might not quit his post. 
He might not sell his fields, for the treasury had a lien 
on them; he might not travel at his ease, for that would 
be a waste of public time ; he might not live unmarried, 
for his duty was to provide children to succeed him when 
he died, he might not even take Holy Orders when 
he would, for folks of narrow means were good enough 
for that, but “he must stay in the bosom of his native 
country, and, like the minister of holy things, go through 
the ceaseless round of solemn service.” 


ch. ix. Administrative Forms of Government. 219 

In their despair the decuriones try to fly, but they are 
hunted down without compunction. Their names are 
posted in the proclamations with runaways and crimi¬ 
nals of the lowest class; they are tracked even to the 
precincts of the churches, to the mines and quarries 
where they seek shelter, to the lowest haunts of the most 
degraded outcasts. In spite of all such measures their 
numbers dwindled constantly, and had to be recruited, 
while land waS given to the newly enrolled to qualify 
them for the duties of the service. Still the cry was for 
more to fill the vacant offices of state, and the press gang 
gathered in fresh tax-gatherers—for they were little 
more—from every class. The veteran’s son, if weak or 
idle, the coward who had mutilated himself to be unfit for 
soldiers’ work, the deacon who had unfrocked himself or 
been degraded—all were good enough for this—the 
priestly gambler even, who had been counted hopeless 
and excommunicate, and who was declared to be pos¬ 
sessed of an evil spirit, was sent not to a hospital but to 
the curia. 

4 0 . The same tendencies were at work meantime on 
every side in other social grades, for in wellnigh all alike 
the imperial system first interfered with 
healthy energy by its centralised machinery, fiiEriS ^ 
discouraged industry by heavy burdens, and 
then appealed to force to keep men to the burdens, 
taskwork which they shunned. Its earlier 
rulers had indeed favoured the growth of trade and the 
development of industry, had respected the dignity of 
the labour of free artisans, and fostered the growth of 
guilds and corporations which gave the sense of mutual 
protection and self-respect to the classes among which 
they sprung. Bounties and privileges were granted to 
many of such unions, which specially existed for the 


2 20 


The Age of the A?itonines. 


CH. ix. 


service of the state, for the carrying trade of Roman 
markets, or the labours of the post, the arsenals, the 
docks. 

Over these the control became gradually more strin¬ 
gent as the spur of self-interest ceased to prompt the 
workers to continued effort. Men must be chained, like 
galley slaves if need be, to their work, rather than the 
well-being of society should suffer, or government be 
discredited in vital points. The principle adopted in their 
case was extended to many other forms of industry 
which languished from the effects of higher taxation or 
unwise restrictions, and were likely to be deserted in 
despair. In the rural districts also sturdy arms must be 
kept to the labours of the field, lest the towns be 
starved by their neglect; peasants must not be allowed 
to roam at will, or betake themselves to other work, but 
be tied to the fields they cultivated in a state of vil¬ 
leinage or serfdom. The armies could not safely be 
exposed to the chances of volunteer recruits; but the 
landowners must provide their quota, or the veterans 
bring up their children in the camp, or military colonies 
be planted on the frontier with the obligation of per¬ 
petual service. 

So, high and low, through every grade of social status, 
the tyranny of a despotic government was felt. It drained 
the life-blood from the heart of every social organism ; 
it cut at the loots of public spirit and of patriotic pride, 
and diied up the natural sources of unselfish effort. 
And then, in self-defence, it chained men to their work, 
and made each department of the public service a sort 
of convict labour in an hereditary caste. 

But the toil of slaves is but a sorry substitute for the 
enlightened industry of freemen; and the empire grew 
poorer as its liberties were cramped. It grew weaker 


ch. ix. Administrative Forms of Government. 221 

also in its energies of self-defence, for when the barba¬ 
rians knocked loudest at the gates, instead of the strong 
cohesion of a multitude of centres of free life bound to 
each other by a thousand interlacing sympathies, they 
found before them only towns and villages standing 
alone in helpless isolation, and vainly looking round 
them for defence, while the central mechanism was 
sadly out of gear. 

The imperial Colossus seemingly had dwindled to an 
inorganic group of loose atoms. 





' 














V 











INDEX 


A donis, 169. 

Aelia Capitolina, 75. 

Agri decumates, 28 
Agricola, Calpurnius, 99. 

Akiba, 75. 

Alcantara, 16. 

Alexander the grammarian, 120. 
Alexandria, 60, 113, 185. 

Algeria, 55. 

Altinum, 103. 

Ancona, 17. 

Anio, 18. 

Antimachus, 67. 

Antinous, 60. 

Antioch, 43, 47, 54, 93, 1x2, 199. 
Antoninus, Marcus, 82, 84-135, 143, 
* 5 *» 2I 5- 

Antoninus, Pius, 72, 73, 77-84, 157. 
Antoninus, Marcus, 42. 

Apamea, 25. 

Apis, 50. 

Apollodorus, 38, 66, 69. 

Apollonius, 82, 119. 

Apologists, 153. 

Appian Road, 16. 

Apuleius, 196-198. 

Aqua Marcia, 17. 

Aquae (Baden-Baden), 27. 

Aquileia, 102, 105. 

Arabia, 48. 

Arbela, 47. 

Aristides, 113, 168, 195, 198, 218. 
Aristocles, 193. 

Armenia, 42, 44, 92. 

Arrian, 58, 68, 178. 

Artaxata, 94. 

Arval Brothers, 158-163. 

Asklepios f ./Esculapius], 167. 
Assyria, 48. 


Athens, 38, 42, 43, 58, 184, 192, 193. 
Attica, 195, 

Attis, 200. 

Augustan History, Writers of, 135. 
Augustus, 11, 26, 28, 63, 74, 157, 165, 
214. 

Aulus Gellius, 194. 

Aurelius, M., vide Antoninus. 
Avidius Cassius, 93, 94, 108-112. 


B abylon, 4 s. 

Bacchanalia, 165. 
Baiae, 73. 
Barchochebas, 75. 
Belgrade, 31. 
Beneventum, 19. 
Bether, 75. 

Bithynia, 141, 212. 
Blandina,149. 
Brigantes, 80. 

Britain, 53, 55, 99. 
Bructeri, 26. 


C ALEDONIA, 99. 

Caligula, 73, 162. 
Calpurnius, v. Agricola. 
Capitoline, the, 38. 
Cappadocia, 59. 

Carlisle, 55. 

Carnac, 59. 

Carpathians, the, 37. 
Carrhae, 42. 

Cassius, v. Avidius. 
Cassius, v. Dion. 
Catacombs, the, 132. 
Cato, 67, 81, 190. 

Celsus, 152. 




224 


Index. 


Centumcellae, 16. 

Cephalonia, 58. 

Cephissia, 194. 

Chaeroneia, 185. 

Chaldaea, 49. 

China, 94 
Chrestus, 136. 

Christian Church, the, 135-156, 171, 
188. 

Cicero, 67, 190. 

Cilicia, 49. 

Cladova, 35. 

Claudius, 57, 136. 

Clemens, 141. 

Clyde, the, 100. 

Colchis, 82. 

Collegia, 158. 

Commodus, 115, 132. 

Como, si. 

Constantine, 38. 

Constantius, 40. 

Cornelius Palma, 65. 

Corybas, 200. 

Crassus, 42. 

Ctesiphon, 48, 49, 94. 

Cu. ius, 80. 

Cynic, picture of, 180. 

Cyprus, 49, 75. 

Cyrenaica, 49. 

Czernetz, 35. 


D acian war, 29-36. 

Dacians, 29. 

Dante, 51. 

Danube, the, 27-29, 80, 100. 

Daphne, 42, 93. 

Decebalus, 28, 29, 31, 33. 
Decuriones, 218. 

Diocletian, 115. 

Diognetus, 119. 

Dion Cassius, 8, 30, 35, 51, 107, 115, 
* 34 - 

Dion Chrysostom, 6, 182-186. 
Dneister, 99. 

Domitian, 1, 7, 16, 141, 183. 
Domitilla, 141. 

Drusus, 28. 


E DESSA, 48. 

Egypt, 22, 48, 60, 163. 
Eletisinian mysteries, 113. 
Ennius, 67,190. 

Ephesus, 193. 

Epictetus, 119, 177-181. 
Epiohan“s, 46. 

Euphrates, 43, 48, 58, 92, 94, 101. 


F AUSTINA, wife of Antoninus 
P., 28. 

Faustina, wife of M. Aurelius, 00, 96, 
11^-113, 133, 196. 

Fautinianae, 114. 

Favorinus, 66, 191. 

Flavian dynasty, 163. 

Florus, 68. 

Forth, Firth of, 100. 

Fronto, 85 , 90, 95, 119, 190. 


G alen, io 3 . 

Germania of Tacitus, 26. 
Germany, 26, 54. 

Getae, 28. 

Gnostics, 154. 

Gordian, 159. 

Goths, 74. 

Gregory the Great, 51. 


H adrian, 29, 51-76, 144,145, 

192, 304. 

Hatszeger Thai, 33. 

Helvidius, 4. 

Hermannstadt, 35. 

Herodes Atticus, 193, 218. 
Hormisdas, 40. 

Hydaspes, the, 43. 

T LLYRIA, too. 

J. India, 48. 

Irenaeus, 144. 

Iron Gates, the, 35. 

Isseus, 190. 

Isis, 165, 169, 204. 


TEPOME, 76. 

J . Jews, 74-77, 80, 135. 
ulian, 132. 

ulianus Sulvius, 63, 68. 
Julius Caesar, 26. 

Julius Severus, 76 
Junius V. Rusticus. 
Justin Martyr, 14a, 156. 


L AMB^ESIS, 55- 

Licinius Sura, 12, 29. 
Logos, the, 155. 

Longinus, 34. 

Lorium, 81, 89. 

Lucian, 151, 198-201. 
Lucilla, 95. 

Lugdunum, 148, 170. 
Lupercalia, 158. 

Lusius Quietus, 31, 65. 





Index. 


225 


M ^SIA, 29, 34 . 

Mainz, 29. 

Marcomanni, 100, 105. 
Mausoleum of Augustus, 74. 
Mausoleum of Hadrian, 74. 
Maximus, 120. 

Memnon’s statue, 59. 
Memphis, 200. 

Mithras, 200. 

Momus, 200. 

Moo>-s, the, S3, 80, 98. 


Praefect ef the City, 215. 
Praefect of the Praetorians, 215. 
Prusa, 24, 182, 185. 

Ptolemies, the, 59. 

Ptolemy, 17. 


Q UADI, 102, 106. 

Quietus, v. Lusius. 
Quintilian, 190. 

Quirinal, the, 38. 


N ero, 45,73. i°3» *37- 

Nerva, 1-7. 
Newcastle, 55. 

Nicaea, 24. 

Nicomedia, 24. 

Nineveh, 48. 


R avenna, 108. 

Rhine, 27, 81. 
Rimini, 97. 

Roumanians, 38. 
Rusticus, 87, 98, 119, 146. 


O GRADINA, 31. 

Origen, 145. 
Orontes, the, 46. 
Orsova, 31. 

Ostia, 16. 

Oxus, the, 43. 


P ALESTINE, 49, 75. 

Palma, v. Cornelius, 65. 
Panathenaic Speech, 195. 

Pannonia, 31, 35, 52, 115. 
Parthamasiris, 44. 

Parthian War, under Trajan, 42-49 ; 

under M. Aurelius, 92-96. 
Parthians, the, 34. 

Peregrinus Proteus, 151. 

Persia, 48. 

Phidias, 70, 167. 

Philager, 195. 

Phrygian Mother, 170. 

Placentia, 19. 

Plato, 84, 115, 124, 155, 188. 

Pliny, 3, 14, 17, 21, 22, 50, 141, 212. 
Plotina, 9, 15, 53. 

Plutarch, 166, 185-189, 211. 
Polemon, 82, 192. 

Polybius, 205. 

Polycarp, 147-148. 

Polycletus, 70. 

Pompeianus, 131. 

Pompeius Magnus, 139. 

Pomponia Graecina, 136. 

Ponticus, 150. 

Pontine Marshes, 16. 

Poppaea, 137. 

Pothinus, 149. 


S ABAZIUS, 200. 

Sabina, 59. 

Salii, 85, 157. 

Salvius Julianus, 63, 68. 
Samosata, 199. 

Sargetia, 36. 

Sarmatians, 116. 
Sarmizegethusa, 33. 

Save, the, 31. 

Segestica, 31. 

Seleucia, 43, 48, 94. 

Selinus, 49. 

Seneca, 205. 

Sempis, 60, 165. 

Servianus, 52, 72. 

Severus, Julius, 76. 

Sextus, 120. 

Sibylline books, 164. 

Sirmium, 114, 196. 

Smyrna, 82, 113, 147, 168, 192. 
Socrates, 155, 176. 

Sophists, 174. 

Spain, 84, 

Statius the Poet, 204. 

Statius Priscus, 94. 

Stoics, the, 90, 127-130, 179. 
Strabo, 31. 

Suetonius, 136. 

Suez, Isthmus of, 17 
Sura, v Licinius. 

Susa, 48. 

Syria, 40, 42, 52. 


T acitus, 5,26,100,137. 

Tapae, 32. 


Taurobolium, 170. 
Taurus, 113. 


Q 






226 


Index . 


Tertullian, 144, 143. 
Thracians, the, 27. 

Thule, 205. 

Tiberius, 28, 136. 

Tibur, villa at, 69. 

Tiema, 31. 

Tigranes, 43. 

Tigris, the, 47. 

Tiridates, 45. 

Titus, 48, 74. 

Trajan, 7-51, 142, 185, 218. 
Transylvania, 29, 32. 
Trapezus, 58. 

Troy, 57. 

Turks, the, 43. 
Tum-Severin, 35. 


T 7 ENICE, 51. 

V Verginius Rufus, 2. 

Veras, iElius, 71, 88. 

Verus, Lucius, 91, 92-96, iot , 102, 
109. 

Verus, M. Annius, v. M. Antoninus, 
8 4 -. 

Vespasian, 12, 26, 205. 

Vienna in Gaul, 148. 

Vienna in Germany, 114. 
Viminacium, 31. 

Volcan Pass, 35. 




LPIA TRAJANA, 27. 


X ANTEN, 27. 

Xiphilinus, xof . 




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M. A., late Scholar of Queen’s College, Oxford. 


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Assassination of Domitian. By the Rev. W. Wolfe Capes, M. A., Reader of An¬ 
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EARLY ROME, to its Capture by the Gauls. By Wilhelm Ihne, Author of “ History 
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of Ancient History in the University at Oxford. 

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A New Edition , Library Style , 


-»- 

®jp I^isforg of (Jppprp* 

By Prof. Dr. ERNST CURTINS. 

Translated by Adolphus William Ward, M. A., Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Can* 
bridge, Prof, of History in Owen’s College, Manchester. 


UNIFORM WITH MOMMSEN’S HISTORY OF ROME, 
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* Curtius’s History of Greece is similar in plan and purpose to Mommsen’s 
History of Rome , with which it deserves to rank in every respect as one of 
the great masterpieces of historical literature. Avoiding the minute de¬ 
tails which overburden other similar works, it groups together in a very 
picturesque manner all the important events in the history of this king¬ 
dom, which has exercised such a wonderful influence upon the world’s 
civilization. The narrative of Prof. Curtius’s work is flowing and ani¬ 
mated, and the generalizations, although bold, are philosophical and 
sound. 

CRITICAL NOTICES. 


“ Professor Curtius’s eminent scholarship is a sufficient guarantee for the trustworthiness 
of his history, while the skill with which he groups his facts, and his effective mode of narrat¬ 
ing them, combine to render it no less readable than sound. Prof. Curtius everywhere 
maintains the true dignity and impartiality of history, and it is evident his sympathies are 
on the side of justice, humanity, and progress.” —London Athenaum. 

“ We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius’s book better than by saying that it may 
be fitly ranked with Theodor Mommsen’s great work.” — London Spectator. 

“As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no previous work is comparable to 
the present for vivacity and picturesque beauty, while in sound learning and accuracy of 
statement it is not inferior to the elaborate productions which enrich the literature of the 
age.” — N. Y. Daily Tribune. 


“ The History of Greece is treated by Dr. Curtius so broadly and freely in the spirit of 
the nineteenth century, that it becomes in his hands one of the worthiest and most instruct¬ 
ive branches of study for all who desire something more than a knowledge of isolated facts 
for their education. This translation ought to become a regular part of the accepted course 
of reading for young men at college, and for all who are in training for the free political 
life of our country.” — N. Y. Evening Post. 

nlk ) 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, Publishers, 



3.7 i 


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A New Edition , Library Style» 

-. 

Jjisforg of jRomp, 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO THE PERIOD OF ITS DECLINE. 

By Dr. THEODOR MOMMSEN. 

Translated, with the authors sanction and additions, by the Rev. W. P. Dickson, Regius 
Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University of Glasgow, late Classical Examiner of 
the University of St. Andrews. With an introduction by Dr. Leonhard Schmitz, and 
a copious Index of the whole four volumes, prepared especially for this edition. 

REPRINTED FROM THE REVISED LONDON EDITION. 

Four Volumes, crown 8vo, gilt top. Price per Set, $ 8 . 00 . 


Dr. Mommsen has long been known and appreciated through his re¬ 
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Italy, as the most thoroughly versed scholar now living in these depart¬ 
ments of historical investigation. To a wonderfully exact and exhaustive 
knowledge of these subjects, he unites great powers of generalization, a 
vigorous, spirited, and exceedingly graphic style and keen analytical pow¬ 
ers, which give this history a degree of interest and a permanent value 
possessed by no other record of the decline and fall of the Roman Com¬ 
monwealth. “ Dr. Mommsen’s work,” as Dr. Schmitz remarks in the 
introduction, “ though the production of a man of most profound and ex¬ 
tensive learning and knowledge of the world, is not as much designed for 
the professional scholar as for intelligent readers of all classes who take 
an interest in the history of by-gone ages, and are inclined there to seek 
information that may guide them safely through the perplexing mazes of 
modern history.” 

CRITICAL NOTICES. 

“ A work of the very highest merit; its learning is exact and profound ; its narrative full 
of genius and skill; its descriptions of men are admirably vivid. We wish to place on 
record our opinion that Dr. Mommsen’s is by far the best history of the Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Commonwealth.” — London Times. 

“This is the best history of the Roman Republic, taking the work on the whole — the 
yithor’s complete mastery of his subject, the variety of his gifts and acquirements, his 
graphic power in the delineation of national and individual character, and the vivid interest 
which he inspires in every portion of his book. He is without an equal in his own sphere.” 
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Prom the Fall of Woolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. 


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Mr. Froude is a pictorial historian, and his skill in description and full¬ 
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sources of English history in one of its most remarkable periods. — Brit - 
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